Maddie Swainhart
Butch Parenthood
Photography
2021
For young Maddie, who had so much care to give, but couldn’t see any caring characters who looked like them.
You are my muse.
My practice revolves around research and construction. I research the archetypes of the Mother, the Nuclear Family, and what nurturing looks like while constructing a queered image of those. I wonder what family could look like outside the binary, considering the question ‘Can we all mother?’
The tension between found footage and performance highlights the gaps between my utopian understanding of motherhood and the Mother figure you saw growing up. My use of self-portraiture allows me to shift between fantasy and reality and emphasize the expectation of gender roles within domesticity while giving you your own playground of The Home.
This is for you and all the queer kids like you, an archive in the making. Giving you more options is the way I nurture.
