All text from the Exhibition, CORPUS DELICTI, which appeared at the Art & History Museums of Maitland in 2022
A Living and Contemporary History By Mär Martinez
When you walk into a museum it’s normal to expect to encounter something preserved in time, but today you are going to see an exhibit that is a living and contemporary history. Corpus Delicti extends beyond a personal account of intergenerational trauma because it reflects the experiences of survivors throughout time. The content can be at times, difficult to navigate through emotionally, but it is a very real reality for people of all genders, particularly women.
Jessica Caldas offers up her experiences as a woman, mother, and as a survivor with unparalleled vulnerability, and I believe this exhibit opens a dialogue about circumstances of overt violence and expectations of gender-based labor that are still to this day not widely discussed in a meaningful way. Corpus Delicti resists the seductive trap of becoming a painful cautionary tale of victimization through circumstance and gender-based violence and instead embraces joy, tenderness, and community care, amid exhaustion and intergenerational trauma. In a way, this exhibition of personal history is a love letter to resilience and a particular breed of feminine strength.
The intimate and protected setting here at A&H creates a safe space for hard conversations. As a female artist with some parallels, it’s important to see a history that is shared by so many women reflected through the arts. I hope as you experience this exhibition that you approach with an open mind and empathetic heart. I’m thankful that Jessica has publicly narrated what often remains a private, silenced history through this body of work. Please use this as an opportunity to push past the initial discomfort
and honor the untold experiences of many people in our community, including those close to us.
The Milk Bath (Grace)
This piece, created specifically for this exhibition, is the latest work from Caldas’ Tired Bodies series. These works are exaggerated and distorted figurative soft sculptures that embody the weight of their experiences and of the expectations that have been placed upon them. The large, Tired Bodies are made from used sheets and other household linens. They possess a fleshy familiarity that is intimate and a little uncomfortable. Certainly, the Tired Bodies are meant to cue the female figure and the concerns
primarily relevant to women but within their figure is also an ambiguity. Because their limbs, bodies, and breasts are exaggerated, they also defy a necessarily female object hood and can embody a more general experience of labor and fatigue as well.
Caldas states on The Milk Bath, “This piece is as much a reaction to how I had to think about all these works exhibited together, as it was to the look back on the trajectory of my life and artwork over the past ten years. What are the threads that connect these works and the stories I am telling about my own trauma and that of others? What connects the deep feelings of joy and resilience amidst all the pain and labor? When thinking about this, I continuously returned to the sense of community that fills my work,
regardless of its medium and subject matter. Women have always functioned as witnesses and supports for each other, caring, communing, and crying. The three figures of The Milk Bath are literally a part of each other, forming a tight circle or knot depending on how you look at it. From their breasts spill pearls, that gather at their feet. This references not only the milk from a mother’s breast, but
The Matriarch’s Timeline
The original concept of this work began back during Caldas’ graduate thesis studies. Now, not only as artist and daughter but as mother, she was able to realize the scope and breadth of the timeline an bring it to its current realized state. Caldas states about the work, “When I was working on the Matriarch’s Timeline, I was studying the concept of “Everyday Violence” and thinking about how this applied to Women and Women identifying lives (and frankly, for any person of marginalized identity). We live our whole lives, for most of us from the time we are far too young, on a spectrum of violence that ranges from mundane sexism to traumatic acts of direct violence. The spectrum is further complicated through the social, and cultural violence that is inflicted on our bodies and lives. Most of the women I know are survivors. I’m interested in detailing the complexity of surviving and thriving beyond this spectrum because these women are spectacular and brilliant despite what they have had to endure. Enter my mother, who has functioned in my work like an icon of women. She has experienced, since a too young age, every aspect of the spectrum I describe. Despite her experiences, she has lived a spectacular and beautiful life, one I find extraordinary. She has raised children who are happy and loved, she has loved and been loved, she has had an incredibly successful career and built community after community for herself. It is this triumph and joy that I hope shines through, as well as her own experiences on the spectrum of violence, and her thoughts and feelings as she navigated it all”
Recognizing, Processing, Healing By Elizabeth Ives, Jessica’s mother
I watched the aftermath of my daughter being raped. I say watched, because I don’t think she let anyone participate in the process of her healing until many years later. For a while, she wouldn’t even say she was raped, instead using softer words to describe what happened. I called it rape and eventually so did she.
As an artist, Jessica began incorporating tough social issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and more in her practice, a direct result of her own experience and of the role of activist she was then operating in. It was around that time when Jessica started asking questions about my own history of sexual assault, incest, and physical violence. I felt the best way to tell her my story was to write letters and thus began an exchange between us that lasted years. She also took time to look through family photos, documents, letters, journals, and other detritus from my life. For quite some time, all this information swirled around in her artist-mind, eventually materializing into The Matriarch’s Timeline, the piece you see before you in this exhibition.
When she asked if I’d be okay with the use of this collection of materials in her work, I said yes almost right away. I did wonder how I’d feel about being quite so exposed, but she assured me that it would be subtle. At this point, Jessica had been doing so much work on processing her rape and that process spilled out in a myriad of ways: in her art, her legislative work, her decision to be sober, her relationships, her family, and her willingness to openly discuss what had happened. The Matriarch’s Timeline was a natural extension of that healing process, I felt. I recognized myself in the initial aftermath of Jessica’s rape. I recognized her inability to accept help at that time. I recognized her reactionary behaviors. I like to think that she recognized herself in me, too. Her genuine interest in my history was comforting. I liked that she cared enough to delve into, and thoroughly digest, the mostly ugly nuances of my life. By the time I saw the final manifestation of this work, I was so proud of her. I was proud of myself, too.
The Dilemma By Rachel Caldas Prout, Jessica’s twin sister
I had to go back and reread Jessica’s thesis to write this. I remember her calling me up, feels like years ago, asking for permission to base a piece in her thesis on me. I would later learn, the piece would be titled, The Dilemma. The work dealt with the physical expectations placed on women, on me, throughout our lives. A visual investigation into the weight and contradiction of women wanting both work and family, of attempting to, “have it all.”
It is strange now, imagining how she must have perceived these challenges I faced from her own perspective - that of a newlywed new-mother always balancing too many things, but still achieving so much always. But then, that’s how I saw her. How I see her. Honestly, back then I did not feel Jessica saw me, understood me, or even knew me. It was one of the most painful times in our relationship. When she got married, it was a loss that I felt so deeply, like experiencing a death. I was suddenly alone. I selfishly slept through her wedding and barely spoke to her for months; I was so exhausted and pained by the experience. My new dilemma was how to be a part of Jessica’s life, a part of my entire family’s life, how to even consider having a family or dream of my own.
When I read her description of The Dilemma - and I understand that Jessica knew me better than I realised. I think about the mirror, the frame from which you could view this suspended, weighted, tired body, giving form to “the physical expectations placed on women”. How did she capture it so well? The ropes that hold us up, the supports we cling too, the bricks that weigh us down. Often in my life I felt valued only for my appearance, I was afraid to be seen as anything less than beautiful, which in turn made me hate my appearance and drove me to find something else that could make me stand out. I wanted to be the best at something, anything. But of course, I still always thought I had to be a pretty face too just in case that was all that mattered to everyone.
These were the ropes that held me up, the support I clung too, the bricks that weighed me down.
Now, years later, I have the dream job, the partner I imagined but never thought I would meet, and the baby I yearned for. Here I have it all. I understand it’s still a delicate dance of when to give and when to take. A constant decision to make, an ever-present Dilemma.
The ropes that still hold me up, the support I still cling too, the bricks that still weigh me down.