Motherly

Responding both theologically and artistically to understandings of the mother and the divine in Christian theology, Rebekah Pryor’s Motherly: Reimagining the maternal body in feminist theology and contemporary art brings together personal visual art practice, theological exploration, and maternal subjectivity to explore how contemporary images of the maternal body function spiritually. The philosophy of Luce Irigaray, and in particular Irigaray’s work on sexuate difference, influences Pryor as she studies and critiques traditional Christian representations of the maternal body in the context of the divine (the term "sexuate" stems from Irigaray’s philosophy and refers to a complex existential modality of sexual difference beyond social constructs). Ultimately, Pryor’s own contemporary artwork, much of which graces the pages of Motherly, as well as her processes of artmaking, serve as the passageways through which the author-artist re-envisions both the maternal body and the power of the image in terms of the divine and Christian feminist theology.

“An Ordinary Story,” the opening chapter of Motherly, introduces the reader to the author’s main exploration. Pryor examines how her own maternal subjectivity and experiences in a female-identified body are inseparable from her spirituality. This coalescence of the maternal body as a spiritual vessel, however, conflicts with traditional and patriarchal Christian representations of the mother’s body as an empty vessel between God and man, or God and male child, most exemplified in the longstanding visual culture surrounding the figure of the Virgin Mary. Raised in the context of the Anglican Church, Pryor seeks to expand the religious imaginary of the maternal and female sexuate body in Christin culture. As an artist and scholar, she finds efficacy in the artworks she has created of her own maternal experiences. These images have the capacity to function philosophically and spiritually, showing viewers how contemporary images of the maternal body can themselves be icons.

Each of Pryor’s subsequent five chapters revolves around a motif of the maternal body that the artist has encountered during her artistic practice. Thus, Pryor’s artworks play a significant role in all these chapters, demonstrating to the reader how artistic images merge with the artist’s own maternal subjectivity to re-imagine the body of the mother and the divine. In the second chapter, “Performing the Icon,” for example, the artist’s 2014 work Triptych, which also appears as the book’s cover image, exemplifies the emergence of the sacred in an ordinary maternal body. Pryor used her own body as the template when creating Triptych, and both the image and her process of making the image contributed to a spiritual becoming, not only for the artist but for viewers who also experience the image as a contemporary icon.

Tapping material on the Virgin Mary from Irigaray’s Key Writings (Bloomsbury, 2004), as well as the interesting history of Julian of Norwich, a 14^th century CE medieval Christian mystic, Pryor makes the case that maternal genealogy and a “Mother Jesus” figure are liberating and allow us an experience of Irigaray’s “sensible transcendental” (“the way we encounter and experience the divine” 21) as we re-imagine patriarchal understandings of God, Mary, and Jesus (18-21). As such, there is a way in which we can imagine the maternal body of the Virgin Mary not as an empty vessel but as itself an articulation of God in the feminine (21). Pryor is similarly influenced by the historical work of Sara Ritchey, which looks at how the female body is integral to an “imaginative theology of re-creation” (15).

Pryor moves on to look at the motifs of “Lament” (chapter 3), “Sacred Canopy” (chapter 4), “Lullaby” (chapter five), and “Horizon” (chapter six), all of which are integral to maternal bodies and which figure prominently in how the woman in the mother is revealed. In addition to exploring these motifs in her own artwork, Pryor also examines their emergence in the work of others, such as contemporary artists Marina Abramović, Sophia Brous, Alma Lopez, Yulyurlu Lorna Fencer Napurrurla, Janet McKenzie, Michael Needham, Julie Rrap, and Motoi Yamamoto, among others, as well as in the work of historical figures such as the Renaissance artists Michelangelo and Fra Angelico.

Pryor also describes the fascinating ways in which her maternal imagery has interacted with the artwork and spaces of others. In chapter 4, for example, Pryor describes how her works Portable Canopy, Fleur de lis, and Dear Mr. Butterfield, all part of her 2015 installation and exhibition piece at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, penetrated and dialogued with the 19^th-century architecture of Gothic Revivalist William Butterfield, who designed the cathedral (102-113). Whereas Butterfield’s architecture represents vastness, solidity, and certainty, Pryor’s contemporary exhibition within the Gothic space that Butterfield designed represents the impermanence and ephemeral life qualities of human experience, qualities especially seen in the mothering of children.

Besides Irigaray’s influence on Pryor’s approach to the maternal body, the author-artist also draws from other philosophers, including Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Marie-José Mondzain. In particular, Pryor is interested in Mondzain’s work on Marian icons, Kristeva’s discussion of “semiotic chora,” and Barthes’ ideas on intersubjectivity, all of which impact Pryor’s understanding of how the maternal body and mother-child relations are sites of spiritual power and growth. Pryor also devotes significant space to formal analyses of her artwork, and she even communicates the significance of materials used in her own artmaking and the artmaking of others, relaying how these materials, such as gold leaf and salt, have the capacity to convey the sacred.

At 161 pages, Pryor’s book is slim. However, the chapters are rich in discussion and provide readers with a powerful interdisciplinary contribution to understanding how maternal bodies and contemporary art have a lasting impact on Christian feminist theology. Pryor’s ability to expand the religious imaginary not only through her writing but through her artwork, which celebrates the God of the incarnation and the maternal body, reminds the reader that art and the material world have philosophical potency and the ability to impact cultural and intellectual transformation.

Anna M. Hennessey is director of the Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth (SSPRB) and a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Anna Hennessey

Date Of Review:

March 29, 2024