Starting from her own personal experience as a childfree woman, Paola Valenzano tells us as art is fundamental not only to come to terms with moments of pain and growth, but also for exploring and define oneself in the world. Besides reflecting upon making art as essential nourishment for the individual and for society, Paola also reflects on the film “Lunàdigas or concerning childfree women”, expressing some of her observations on motherhood and non-motherhood.
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PAOLA: «I’m Paola Valenzano, I am an artist let’s say a researcher, a researcher of anthropological and artistic issues. I have no children.
On the topic of choice, the answer is a bit complex, perhaps I cannot sum it up in a yes or no. Well, I never had the fantasy, or at least as a child and during my childhood, growing up, I never had this fantasy of having children. I have always seen myself differently, right?
A fantasy that somehow didn’t come true either, that of traveling and experiencing different cultures. I did it through the studies, but I have never been exactly a great traveller, at least from a certain point onwards. I had no pressure from the family, no judgement or demands of any kind. It was more of an implicit, familiar background which then may have pushed me in the direction of not having children I guess I experienced my birth as harmful.
And so I probably kept within me the fear of being harmful myself.
I mean, I suffered a harm because I interpreted my birth as harming my mother, as something undesired, unwanted, and so having kept this memory I also thought… I was afraid to bring it up again. So I had no direct, conscious pressure, it was an experience in these terms. But for me it’s pretty much history, because I worked on it a lot, also through art. So today I think I am not contaminated by that memory so much. And I realised it when I wondered and felt the impulse to give something to someone, not necessarily a child, but to give a little bit of that heritage back, of knowledge, of skills that I have acquired over the years, especially through art, throught the exchanges I have had with so many people, not only women of course, but especially women on certain issues. Because, basically, often there is an attitude to open up, to share much more intense, much deeper.
All this legacy, a bit of the intangible heritage, also mentioned in Lunàdigas, the documentary, for me it was a theme at one point. I mean, what shall I do with it? But not so much the objects, but all those books I have, which for me are assets of wealth, which I would like to be able to share with someone.
So that’s probably where this idea came from, of making participatory art, of developing more of that aspect of relational art in order to share this intangible heritage, but extremely rich, right? This is surely a theme that dear to me in recent years. And this, for me, means that I have overcome that image of me as a person who can do harm, but I have included within myself the fact that I could also have something to offer, something nourishing to offer, you know? And perhaps this term is not unintentional, in relation to the theme of motherhood.
What made me perceive myself as unwanted, harmful, is the fact that I happened in my mother’s life and during a complicated time in her life as well. So I felt how much she struggled to adapt to this new, unwanted condition, a great, great effort. I always suspected that she had post-partum depression, never overcome, never diagnosed.
I mean, I think that’s kind of the issue. Processed by her up to a certain point, by me a lot. So for me this theme is… Kind of archived.
My mother is no longer here today, and I feel gratitude for all the efforts that has made in some way to overcome this initial condition. An enormous gratitude however, what has been has been, with all its consequences, of course. These things have not been said much, they are events that have been reconstructed somewhat later. Partially through a direct exchange during adolescence, when I started trying to get answers, however, I did not address the issue so directly.
I have a sister who has two children, a boy and a girl. They are wonderful, I adore them. Yes, she has somehow made a different choice, I guess. Although she is a completely different mother than ours was, maybe because of that. Maybe she wanted to measure up to a different model of motherhood. I dont’ know. Then again, on this topic of choice. The choice.
I am convinced that there is a part of our will involved in having or not having children. Then there is a huge underworld, isn’t there? Both in having and not having children, that drives us in that direction. And life happens, too.
I know a number of women that did not want children and had them, due to a series of circumstances, who then maybe even revised the position or not, because it’s not obvious. There are also women who wanted children and did not succeed, despite an endless series of medical or relational or other attempts. So, the issue of will is definetely important, but I am convinced that there is also the will of life, somehow. So this is what I could say, and it concerns myself, my sister and many women.
All these personal issues, let’s say, at a certain stage of my life I started to deal with them through the medium of art.
First, since I was a child, I have written a lot, and I have kept this somewhat adolescent habit of writing, which I have always…evolved. Then through visual art.
There was a long phase in which I really needed to go back to my chidhood, through, for example, sewing on paper.
Later, as I got to know great artist who had preceded me, I realised that choice was not random, sewing and mend, and that it was probably necessary that medium rather than another. I worked on the relationship, especially with my mother, but not only, I created sheets, a sort of artist’s book basically, combining paper, putting together, in a symbolic form, what were my experiences, in other words. And it was a very precious phase for me, but merely a phase. This is not what I still do, or at least not in part.
In my case, and that of so many women, so many women artist I know this is exactly what has happened, that is, a spontaneous, intuitive use of certain artistic tools, at certain stages of one’s life, to go and rework certain issues partly resolved, partly submerged that nevertheless acted in one’s own life in a unconscious manner. And through these instruments they emerged these depths took shape, a colour, they became words, you know? And thus what is sayable, what is observable, becomes containable, right? And also reworkable, because it can be continually reworked an artefact that is the fruit of artistic expression. So I would say yes, it is one of my beliefs in this life.
There was also a phase in which I used the metaphor of the creature, in relation to my works. Sometimes I really felt the urgency to express something, exactly like the urgency of childbirth, in some way. And not being able to do that was really…It produced suffering in some way. Well, today I let this image, this metaphor go. Perhaps there is less urgency, maybe there is less need to define, therefore to give names to things. There is also that question of giving names, that was also a phase. For me necessary, but then another one came along, equally necessary, which was to let go all these definitions, right? To really let life flow a bit more freely and let me through life flow a bit more freely, you know? I went through a phase where I needed to define things, so to say this is my creature, now it will go out into the world. Today it is more in my imagination, in my fantasy, it is actually life that is my creature, and that goes for all and sundry. And that’s fine.
Back to the subject of art and artistic expression, as far as I am concerned, in my own history, even there, at a certain stage, however long I must admit, making art has been a way out of the world, hasn’t it? I mean, the whole world outside. I’m in it, my expression. But at some point that relationship between me and my inner world became sterile. Not because my inner world became exhausted, because it no longer made sense for me to keep having a relationship that was not also a communication. So it came about in this way the urgency to give it a wider significance, more collective, to making art.
Often what I realized is that artists really talk to each other, maybe understand each other and that is wonderful because artists often love other artists cause they speak a common language. They often experience that sense of belonging, which maybe in most of society you don’t experience, or do you? It’s a great thing.
At the same time, for me at least, I always try to speak for myself, it had become a sterile thing that no longer nourished me and which I was also losing the meaning of.
Today I am truly convinced that we can all somewhat enhance our resources and integrate art into our lives.
Art no longer has to be something on the outsides, that we just observe, that we feed on. It is always a passive nourishment. We can experience of other aspects of us which we often don’t experience throughout our lives, can we? Today art for me must be experienced by eating it, by doing it, by sharing it, coming out of this protective state in which the artists often place themselves, as a defense. I mean, we can do more than just defend ourselves.
In general terms I would very much like us to stop considering art something superfluous, something that just embellishes, right? Without excluding the aesthetic aspect, because beauty, in my opinion, is also good for you, there is a beauty that is good so it’s actually not pure aesthetic. It is an aesthetic that nourishes.
But going a bit further, I would like it to be understood that it is literally essential, that there’s a part of us that would die if there wasn’t this in the world.
We probably take it for granted, because in reality we are literally surrounded by art.
The human being, especially in Italy, wherever you go, somehow you are surrounded by art, which we know well.
Music, it is much easier to understand that huge impact it has in people’s lives.
Initially visual art has a less powerful impact, but it’s part of that nourishment, poetry… That is what I would like, is to really understand the great existential value of art for all and sundry. And then that it can become an instrument of freedom, of greater freedom.
If routine, if habits, if the tendency to have circular thinking, to repeat patterns in our lives is the result of an automatism, how can we brake this automatism? Precisely by introducing variations: randomness, by introducing art, creativity. By breaking habits, not necessarily by fighting, but also with the delicacy, by getting in touch with our desire to be other things, other than those we already know.
In my opinion this is the wonderful thing that art can actually give us, it is openness in general towards life.
I literally ate the film, I took notes, like in school, because there were lines that really resonated with me, they resonated with me deeply and told parts of me. One in particular had struck me, even though it came from an experience which was diametrically opposed to what I had done in life. It was from a young woman who said that from the moment she became pregnant she had stopped wodering about what to do with her life. And I believe that this is a common condition for many people. Paradoxically, that’s what has always terrified me, isn’t it? Having the road without a way out. A road already mapped out from which there is literally no way out. No turning back, irreversible, right?
It also reminded me of some studies I had done, especially a text by Margaret Mead, a famous anthropologist, who in one of her texts made the comparison between adolescence in Western countries, particularly the United States in her case, and Samoa. In that case specifically in Samoa, adolescents had only a few choices. They were already channelled, men into doing certain things, women to do other things. I don’t remember specifically what they were, but we can guess some of them, there were two or three choices. This obviously produced… It was extremely reassuring. Adolescence in those populations was not so critical, dramatic, such a difficult transition. In the West, meanwhile, having all these possibilities created, and still creates, anxiety and confusion. So it made me think about this, having little choice is obviously reassuring, but it is also limiting. So what can we learn?
To stay in something indeterminate, and to accept that we cannot control everything, to let go of the indeterminacy but also the richness of life that offers us a thousand possibilities, without necessarily closing ourselves off into something reassuring but which then closes off other possibilities.
I didn’t really want to draw a moral from this, though, because maybe I just can’t afford it, but it had struck me how it had been for this woman a relief to be able to get rid of all the anxieties, I guess the questions she was asking herself. I know what I have to do, this is my path that has been mapped out in some way by this biology. I don’t know if that was what she meant, I say what resonated in me.
I was wondering about this today. With today I mean in this period, not really today. I’ve reached an age where people, even out of sensitivity, have stopped asking me certain things. Up to a certain age you almost take it for granted that you can ask girls: Do you have a boyfriend? Do you want children? If you just got married: when are you having children? Guess I’ve reached an age where people, out of politeness, avoid asking me things at all. Perhaps taking it for granted that there is suffering in this absence.
So I think it is necessary for there to be all these pluralities of voices that you are gathering, that your project is gathering, to show that there is not only joy in motherhood, or in the absence of motherhood suffering or lack.
I mean I make my own experience, that is complete. You as a mother have your experience, which is complete, unique by the way. It is not relatable to another’s experience. It is yours and that is fine, and it is mine, it is rich and full, it is not the result of a lack.
How I cannot understand your experience of motherhood, you cannot understand my experience of non-motherhood, which is not merely the result of an absence, but which is full of other things. I think it is very important, to give space to these voices, which somewhat cancel out, at least redefine the stereotype of the woman who then… Better you don’t ask her because the poor woman may be suffering. Right now I don’t feel I am suffering, I am not suffering because of this issue. No, I would say not.
There is another thing I would like to point out. I think that things are very nuanced. I went through phases where I asked myself whether I wanted children in the approach of the famous biological deadline, right? And there was that phase were I actually had a bit of pressure from outside. Not so much from those who were close, but more from acquaintances. You’d better have a child, they stay anyway. Partners come and go, children remain with you, as something of heritage, to possess almost like an investment. I honestly asked myself that question, and each time the answer was: not at all. I never thought I wanted it at all costs and that’s the most authentic answer I could give myself. Then, if there are deep things, resistance… I don’t know. There certainly will be, although I think I’ve investigated a lot. But the most honest answer I could give myself is: not at all costs. I think I was honest, as I’m peaceful now that they are not here. So I am OK with that.»
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