Hormonal Cloud
Emmelime de Mooij
(2015)
An electric massage rug depicting a wine stain, a still life print of objects that the artist used during her pregnancy and childbirth, and a tissue box in the form of a museum pedestal are all components that indicate a state of liquidness.
During pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding, the body is immersed with an enormous flow of hormones that resembles a stormy cloud saturated with a kind of precipitation, simultaneously physical and emotional. The first manifests through various situations with which every pregnant or young mother is familiar such as the leaking breast milk, the urinary loss, the swollen body extremities, and the postpartum bleeding. The second is ‘a monument to pouring emotions’ such as sensations of happiness, sadness, rage, love, loneliness, or hostility that are often referred to as hysterical or irrational. Whereas such emotions are commonly repressed, sometimes by medicine, they are part of every young mother’s experience and are genuine and justified.
By inviting viewers to interact with and contemplate metaphors of the hormonal world of young maternity, Hormonal Cloud aspires to bring an internal perspective onto the emotional and physiological changes that young mothers are confronted with.