Being a Good Woman: Martha Rosler and my Perfect Mother

The work

Painting of a mother holding a baby, on a second-hand tablecloth embroidered with rabbits, flowers, Easter eggs and garden fences. — Perfect Mother, 2018, acrylic on readymade textile, 65 × 65 cm

Recently, in a museum in Amsterdam, I watched Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen again. Every time I see it, it puts a smile on my face.

In this 1975 video, Rosler stands in a kitchen wearing an apron, naming and demonstrating utensils in alphabetical order. It looks like a cooking show, but her gestures are abrupt, exaggerated, sometimes almost violent. I love the humour she brings to such a serious subject: the roles women are taught to play, and how easily those expectations come to seem natural.

Watching it again made me think of my painting Perfect Mother, and how an image of motherhood can be more complex than expected.

I found the textile in Humana, a second-hand shop, during one of my first trips to Berlin. I was falling in love with the city and its histories. The cloth is decorated with rabbits, flowers, Easter eggs and little garden fences. I don’t know whose home it came from.

Into its almost empty centre, I painted Magda Goebbels holding a baby. I had been reading her biography. Nazi propaganda presented her as an exemplary German mother. In May 1945, she and her husband, Joseph Goebbels, arranged the murder of their six children before taking their own lives.

Perfect Mother was one of my first paintings on second-hand textile, and one of my earliest works exploring the history of the Goebbels family. When I bought the cloth, I wasn’t yet sure what I would paint on it, though I imagined something connected to home and family.

The contrast emerged as the work took shape: the cloth’s cheerful decoration and the image I chose, reminiscent of a Madonna and Child, convey a tenderness that makes Magda’s story even more disturbing.

Perhaps that is what brings me back to Rosler’s video: the way humour can draw us into a difficult subject. In Perfect Mother, it is the apparent tenderness that draws us in. I’m interested in that moment when something makes us smile, or seems reassuring, and then asks us to look again.

Watch Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) →

Video still of Martha Rosler in a kitchen holding up a knife, from Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. — Semiotics of the Kitchen, by Martha Rosler, 1975

The studio experience

Two hours in the studio, just you or you and one other person. Pick a technique and take home what you make. Materials and fika included.

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~~1 000 kr~~ 800 kr per session (1 or 2 people) · until 31 December

For a limited time, readers of this letter get 20% off a studio session. It makes a cosy autumn outing or a Christmas gift: a creative date, an afternoon with a friend, or time together for a parent and child from age ten up. Same price whether you come alone or bring someone. Roslagsgatan 21, Stockholm

To claim the discount, mention this letter when you book. Giving it as a gift? Reply to this email and I’ll arrange a gift booking with an open date.

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