Çağdaş Sanatta Maternal Alan

Abstract

In this study, how the earliest experiences with the mother (body), who is the first place and first other of all human beings, come to be reflected in contemporary artworks has been examined in the context of psychoanalytic approaches and by putting an understanding of space, which is woven with relations, in the center. The work reads the preverbal, which extends from the intrauterine life to the learning of speech, as a maternal space in which the first contacts with the world are experienced through the mother's body. This multi-layered concept, which refers to the mother's body as a place where the body and soul is structured, a common psychic space formed by the union of the mother and the baby, and at the same time the bond with this psychic space, which is claimed to be unbreakable throughout life, makes the traces of the forgotten past visible in the present by making it tangible. In the first part of the study, while answering the question of how the experiences in this space, where the self is formed in the sensory relationship with the mother's body, are reflected in the perception and meaning processes and spatial experiences throughout life, the maternal dynamics hidden in the space also come to the surface. In the second part of the study, these maternal dynamics that construct the space in contemporary art works are examined based on the common features in the form, material, technique, approach and purpose of the selected artists. By drawing attention to the relational dimension of human spatial experiences and the fact that our experiences find their meaning by passing through the filter of a network woven with all the intense contacts of the past; personal works remind us of the importance of early experiences in human life by emphasizing that our basic needs as adult children do not change at all. Both the selected contemporary artworks and the personal ones have shown that the “maternal space” has a special language and imagery of its own and have supported the psychoanalytic thesis that the connection with this special space is never broken, by revealing how it comes to be materialized.