In 2015, I became a mother. I was prepared for the gruelling labour and sleepless nights, but the loss of my sense of self came as a surprise. I had no time to think, and I began to feel like a shell of a person.

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My early days of motherhood were alienating and awful, as well as sentimental and dear. I began to see myself as defined only by a relationship. I felt that my son was an appendage of myself, the embodiment of self and other. It was hard to accept that he was a growing, a changing person while I was to remain forever split. When he is near, my thoughts are entangled around him, and when I am away, I cannot seem to be the person I was before.

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A child is how we remain on Earth; they are our legacies. As I see my son grow, I feel my time begin to speed up; I feel my decay. When we think about birth, we must realize our death. Motherhood is precious and raw, wonderful and dark. Using gesture and symbolism to connect Mother and child, I am showing the complex relationship between mother and child and challenging societal norms and cliché interpretations of the selfless or "good" mother.

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Using myself and my children to act in pre-planned painterly tableaux, I create stories that are personal and allegorical. Through beauty, I invite the viewer to contemplate space, gesture, and symbolism to show the complexity of time and the mother-child relationship.

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About

Jennifer Georgescu is a multimedia artist whose projects analyze the dualisms that exist in language, relationships, mythologies and control. Her lifelong interest in what makes us human is reflected by emotionally charged, conceptual photographic constructions. "I often search for the balance that exists in between these dichotomies. This is how I view humanity; always teetering on the line between fiction and reality, domination and submissiveness, self and other." Georgescu was a finalist for Critical Mass, Photolucida in 2021, 2020, and 2019. In 2019, she was awarded the John Chervinsky Scholarship, through the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston, Massachusetts. She was also the 2020 recipient of the William Male Foundation Grant. Recent exhibitions include the Athens Phot Festival, Blue Sky Gallery, Startup Art Fair LA, The Oceanside Museum of Art, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The Baldwin Photographic Gallery, and Center for Fine Art Photography. Recent publications include FRAMES Magazine, Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, Aint Bad, Don't Smile, the Missouri Review, Silvershotz, SHUTR magazine, and PHOTO+.

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www.jengeorgescu.com