ABSTRACT

This chapter details the experience of a collaboration between two artists, one a mother and the other a non-mother or a ‘not-yet-mother’. Focusing on the disenfranchised grief of being childless not by choice and how this connects to the experience and alienation of young motherhood, this chapter illustrates how both circumstances fall outside of the maternal ideal. As well as looking at loss, imaginary children and the unexpected journey of IVF, O’Neill and Paul explore the heritage of belongings, beliefs and genes and the implications of a lack of societal rites of passage. The investigation comes together in their collaborative artwork entitled One For Sorrow, an installation that works as a rite of passage acknowledging maternal loss, whilst the artists’ collaboration itself challenges the fractures between women created by maternal difference.