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Art by Dagmara Bilon

Silent scream- paint,marker and menstruation blood on paper (2015) Artist Statement My current practice is an expression of liberty and defiances to taboos and conventions. Opening up awareness to my wonder-es cycling self, gluing plastic bags with gaffer tape to make a gigantic placenta, feeding my plants menstruation blood and using the earth as material to make body prints. In a self-preserving, modern capitalistic and digital, detached society; I seek authentic expression and an intuitive exploration of felt experiences and impressions involving in a direct way the body. Creative frameworks allow me to investigate a visual language that layer various realities to express surreal depictions of the female body as a source of vulnerable confinement and humerus provocation. The process of making is an invocation and reality is dissected into images fusing the imagined and the real. Scenes form out of the process of bringing together objects in relation to body, space and text. My work is process based and unfolds through experimentation, embodied investigation and collaboration with other artists. More about the artist: Dagmara Bilon is a performance artist/maker, who have been making work since 2003. She creates durational, action based and one to one performance work, for live audiences and for video. Dagmara is also a Dance Movement Therapist, a Purple Lady and lives with her two daughters in south-east London. Work has been presented in England, France, Romania, Iceland, Denmark, Croatia and Spain. For more information on her work see website www.dagmarabilon.com www.thepurpleladies.com

On Friday Night – from Mom Egg Review Vol. 12

Lately, my four-year-old thinks she is old enough to strike the matches. On Friday evenings at sundown, when we light candles to usher in the Jewish Sabbath, she climbs onto the countertop, and grabs the slim box with chubby hands that resemble her oldest sister’s.

Without fail, each week, she does this, and without fail, each week, her father and I admonish her that matches are dangerous, somehow not mastering, ourselves, the lesson to keep them out of her reach at the moment we take them out of the cupboard.

Every family has its variation of how the blessing is recited. Some light a pair of candles; some, as we do, light for the number of members of the family. Some recite the blessing in order of seniority; others, in unison. In traditional homes, only the women light; in others, the men participate. But the Hebrew words, whether sung or spoken, remain the same: Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.

In our family, the blessing is sealed with a kiss.

This is how I was raised. As soon as Shabbat began, my sister and I stood by our mother’s side as she lit her silver candelabra. It stood on a shining mirrored plate on a buffet in the dining room, in front of an octagonal mirror that reflected us, watching her. She placed her manicured hands over her eyes, and silently said the blessing, followed by a lengthy moment of quiet that indicated a dialogue with God. What she asked of Him, she never shared. When she was done, my sister and I each took our turn, and then she kissed us with great force. Shortly thereafter, we sat down to eat.

In my home, I bless five candles in the kitchen, atop a paper covered with Sabbath-themed stickers, stuck to a layer of protective, yet scratched, acrylic. It was a preschool present from Michaela, our oldest daughter, who died unexpectedly when she was five. I never added a silent prayer to God the way my mother does, but now, I offer up a silent “Fuck You.”

This is especially true on the eves of Jewish holidays, which are also ushered in by candle lighting, and to which we add a second blessing thanking God for enabling us to “reach this occasion.” The phrase sounds more powerful in Hebrew, no more so than when David Ben Gurion exclaimed it upon the establishment of the State of Israel, or when my grandfather, a survivor of Auschwitz, proclaimed it at my wedding. To me, now, that second blessing is, simply, offensive. I thank no one for arriving at this moment; I feel scorched by my daughter’s death, and have neither the envy for, nor the capacity to emulate, those who retain faith after catastrophe.

But this is my heritage. To have created a Jewish home after the Holocaust was a source of pride for my Zaide, as we called him, and it has been paramount to my mother, who refers to the imperative every chance she gets. It is all she can do for her parents, I believe, after what they endured, their forearms branded with numbers, their dreams blazing forever thereafter, despite the prescriptions they took.

The truth is, when I was a child, I loved being a Jew, the stories of our patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the fall of the walls of Jericho. I took pride in speaking Hebrew, mastering text, and feeling completely secure, as when I walked into a synagogue during a college semester in Paris, opened a prayer book in the sanctuary, and immediately felt at home.

And even when, as an adult, I became more skeptical of religion, coming to view it as a man-made construct, I continued to observe Shabbat and to keep kosher. When Adam and I married, we agreed to raise our children the way we had been raised. If, playing out the quintessential Jewish parental nightmare, they ultimately reject our lifestyle, we reasoned, at least, they’ll know what they’re leaving.

Keep reading here

Art by Sophie Starzenski

The space in between:
It always happens to me while seeing an image, a landscape, a moment… or just seeing something that I find difficult to explain, a situation that I find inexplicably beautiful. I’m not talking about the beauty of it’s colours or it’s shapes – I’m talking about something different. Something that resonates within us. That beauty depends on the observer, or you could say that it depends on the resonance of the receiver. With time, I could define it this way. Before I used to say what moved me to take certain photos was the space in between the matter.

More about the Artist here

Text by Deborah L. Blicher

Leap of Faith
From Mom Egg Review Vol. 13
The little boy I hope will become my son lines up his scuffed shoes on the edge of the sandbox, gauging the distance to the ground. It’s sixty degrees out, but like all the children I have seen in this Russian city, he’s overdressed to my American eye. Between his striped, knitted cap and puffy blue coat, I can hardly see his face. We speak different languages, but as far as I can tell, he hates me.
The boy, whose name in Misha, is two and a half, with feathery blond eyebrows and merry eyes. Four days ago, my husband Peter and I met him and his sister at their orphanage. The children smiled up at us in the entryway decorated with finger paintings. When their caregiver Anna introduced us–as friends, not yet as parents–they giggled and scrambled down the hall. Smitten, we followed. They rolled trucks at us across the living room carpet. We had a pretend tea-party on the floor and a real one at the table. When Misha vaulted onto the couch and unfurled his body into a magnificent headstand, Anna instructed him to come down. Like every two year old in the world, he refused, so she carried him to the time-out chair.
Over the last three days, the children have sought increasing intimacy with us: holding our hands, daring us to chase them, imitating our English. Yesterday, they ran down the hall in their socks to greet us with outstretched arms. This morning, however, our final visit, they seem subdued. Misha’s sister Katja gravely takes Peter’s hand and leads him to the playground sandbox. Misha doesn’t follow. I walk him to the jungle-gym, which he climbed yesterday with joyful grace. Today he climbs grudgingly. He lets his fingers slip and watches me catch him, and he squawks if I stand too close. I feel he’s wondering both, “Will you keep me safe?” and “Will you give me freedom?”
I decide to try the swing, which he loved yesterday. He faces away from me as I carry him and slumps with apathy when I push him. From behind the swing, I ask whether he’s all right: “Te harasho?” He turns one round ear towards me but won’t reply. When I walk around to the front of the swing, he searches my face a long time.
Back at the sandbox, Peter and Katja have built a row of sandcastles. Peter is earnestly and slowly counting them for her in English. The expression on Katja’s sharp-chinned face suggests she’d like to have him committed. When I set Misha beside her, he turns his back on me and starts singing with a songbird’s loveliness. Then he extends a flattened palm and wipes out the sand-castle I’m building.
Finally I understand. Someone’s explained to the children that Peter and I want to adopt them, taking them away from the life they know. Misha is not angry with Peter because Peter won’t replace a father figure, but he’s angry with me because I’ll replace Anna, the only mother he knows.
His loss staggers me. read more

Art by Rachel Fallon

Weapons of Maternal Destruction
Spoke and Rupture – things done and undone; in what moment does protection or defence turn upon itself and what are the consequences?

More about the Artist

My work explores themes of protection and defence in domestic and maternal realms – the protection of a mother for her child, for her mental health, of identity and place. My research findings lead, not to answers but to the formulation of more questions. The work I make is an attempt to pin these questions down so that the viewer has the possibility to form their own answer through interaction with each piece.

The conflicts and ambivalences of the questions inform the choice of material and technique for each work. The methods of making are crucial to revealing new ideas and resolving thought processes intrinsic to the initial starting point of the piece.

Words by Stephanie Feuer

Drumstick

The adults were downstairs. Their voices mingled with the smell of turkey and came up through the heating vent in my older cousin Mitchell’s room. The windows of his room were all steamy. Outside the snow fell, perfect for sledding. We’d driven from New York to spend Thanksgiving with them in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It felt like nowhere.
We were inside because he didn’t like to play outdoors with me, because, I suspected I could throw a ball harder and shoot baskets better and I was a girl and only 8. He’d want to play football. He was 13 and stronger, but if I got a chance to run, he’d say I cheated. Then I’d cry and he’d tell the adults I was a sore loser. The adults usually believed him. Sometimes I was a sore loser, but mostly he hurt me.
He asked me if I ever played doctor with my friends. I told I’d played with my neighbor Larry, that summer in the miniature log cabin that decorated my parent’s suburban back lawn. Then Mitchell asked me to do something with him, a special game of doctor.
Why should I? I questioned him. His answer was the same answer he gave about mostly everything. “Because I lost a sister,” he’d say and half-close his dark brown eyes. His sister, Lisa, was a year older than me and had died at 6 of encephalitis. I didn’t really believe her death excused his behavior, but I couldn’t argue with it.
It seemed an odd thing to do. It wasn’t anything I’d heard of, and I thought I’d heard a lot because I’d spent so much time at the nursing home my father ran. I knew all about health conditions, catheters and cheating boyfriends from eavesdropping on the nurses. What Mitchell was talking about I hadn’t heard of.
I stared at the molding. It was a red and white stencil my aunt had done herself. She was crafty like that, and a really good cook. Even my grandmother said she made the best version of the family stuffing recipe. I liked to cook, too, and longed to be in the kitchen with the good smells and women.
Mitchell grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me towards him. He unzipped his pants, and with his hand at the back of my neck, pushed me towards his lap. My face rubbed against the navy blue carpet. It burned the skin of my cheek. There were red flecks in the carpet. Eraser residue. I struggled, but he was bigger. He held me down for a moment. It was hard to breathe.
“Suck like a lollipop,” he told me. It was kind of squishy, not like anything I’d had in my mouth before. I didn’t understand why this strange act was what he wanted so much, or why he got away with everything, just cause his sister had died.
I heard the wood stairs creak. I froze. Was this something I’d get in trouble for?
“Its turkey time,” my father announced in a jovial voice, stopping on a step half way up the stairs.
I jerked at the sound of his voice. I must have hurt Mitchell, or maybe he was afraid of being caught. He pushed my head away, hard, slapped me, and zipped up his pants.
“He’s hitting me,” I said and started to cry. “Cry baby, cry baby,” he sneered.
“Work it out, you two,” my father said, no longer sounding so cheerful, “and come down to eat.”
My uncle carved the beautifully cooked turkey, its juices escaping from its bronzed skin and puddling on the big wood cutting board. I took my seat at the table, next to Mitchell. My uncle asked my father and me if we’d like to share a drumstick. You take it, I told my father, I don’t have much of an appetite.

“Drumstick,” by Stephanie Feuer, was originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 13. www.momeggreview.com.