The Rite of Motherhood
«How does the world of today correlate with the forgotten women of the past, and to the land these women worked? And how do we see those women reflected in the forgotten women of today, whose labour continues to be exploited?» This is the main question posed by Sarah Vanhee’s latest creation, Mémé, which premiered on the second day of Brussels’ 2023 Kunstenfestivaldesarts, setting the pace for a packed three-week plunge in international contemporary theatre, dance, performance and visual arts.
Since it started back in 1994, Brussels’ Kunstenfestivaldesarts has always encouraged diversity and debate within and without the national borders, and 2023’s edition – created by the co-artistic direction of Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Dries Douibi – is no different. With more than 30 performances up its sleeve, this year’s festival focuses on the space of language, that gap between us and the languages we speak in which we can say “I”: «this edition can be seen as an adventurous journey into the abyss of language, exploring its ability to define or transform the present».
And a linguistic journey is what Belgian artist, performer and author Sarah Vanhee’s latest creation, Mémé, which premiered at Brussels’ De Kriekelaar Flemish Community Centre, offers us. Talking from a body that used to be someone else’s (which is to say, speaking as a daughter, a granddaughter and, eventually, a mother, too), Vanhee probes into her family history in West Flanders, a land ravaged by both trench warfare and agricultural exploitation, where the now silent bodies of her matriarchal ancestors used to live, labour – and mirror the soil. Indeed, just like the ground they used to walk on, women’s corporeity got tilled, split, excavated and deprived of its oestrus, its fertility, for the comfort, pleasure and profit of men, sedulously «serving the mores of the time».
«Mémé is an ode to all invisible women, the earth, life itself, work and pleasure», the blurb warns. By navigating gently through the years, Vanhee quite literally unfurls the sails onto a multilingual, intergenerational geography of bodies at the constant service of someone – or something – else: the husband, the soil, the children, the house. With simple yet compelling words, our very own helmswoman weaves a course through the knotty waters of social, physical, reproductive and economic oppression, bringing unsung narratives and non-dominant voices (and languages) to the foreground. Assisted by her son and in collaboration with puppeteer and object designer Toztli Abril de Dios, sound designer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, and choreographer Christine De Smedt, the Belgian performer thus takes on the role of a mediumistic storyteller linking the past and the present through suggestive, fetish-like materiality and playful, home-made rituals of repossession.
By opening up an intimate, downy space of affiliation with women from other generations, Vanhee then ponders on the preternatural perseverance of the self-immolating care forcibly incarnated by the female body over the ages, juxtaposing it to her (tender, close-knit, exploratory, limpid) maternal relationship with her own son and thus inviting – ever so softly – a reflection on the various degrees of emancipation that women have attained throughout the years with regard to their “homemaking” role within the family.
And so, when the hour-and-a-half-long circumnavigation of «all those things mothers can’t be» comes to an end and the puppet manifestations of the artist’s mama and nana are finally laid to rest once again in a more feminist, sanguine and gleefully unproductive terrain, one cannot help but wonder if today’s womanhood and motherhood have actually managed to give the elbow to the utilitarian, patriarchal and capitalistic structures outlined in Mémé’s stroll down memory lane, or if modern, independent (white) women can only be so through the witting or unwitting exploitation of bell hooks’ «silent majority», the racialised and marginalised, poorly paid (or straight out unpaid) caregivers, maids, in-home nurses, babysitters and cleaning ladies who took over the “homemaking” role – and the oppression.
The show was played within 2023 Kunstenfestivaldesarts
De Kriekelaar
rue Gallait 86 Gallaitstraat – 1030 Schaerbeek/Schaarbeek, Brussels
Friday 12 of May, 21:00
Saturday 13 of May, 17:00
Sunday 14 of May, 21:00
Tuesday 16 of May, 18:00Kunstenfestivaldesarts presents
Mémé
concept, text and performance Sarah Vanheeobjects and scenography Toztli Abril de Dios
sound Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti
outside eye Christine De Smedt
technicians Babette Poncelet, Geeraard Respeel
performance on screen Leander Polzer Vanhee
with the valuable input from the Vanhee-Deseure family
dedicated to Margaretha Ghyselen and Denise Desaever
English translation Patrick Lennon
French translation Isabelle Grynberg
Dutch translation and surtitles Marika Ingels
production CAMPO
Coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater, Wiener Festwochen, BUDA, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, De Grote Post, Théâtre de la Bastille, Festival d’Automne à Paris and Perpodium
with the support of taxshelter of the Belgian Federal Government via uFund
residencies KWP Kunstenwerkplaats, Kaaitheater, BUDA
acknowledgements Leontien Allemeersch, Katia Castañeda, Wout Clarysse, Gabriela de Dios, Elena Gore, Claudine Grinwis, Flore Herman, Alfredo Méndez, Leonie Persyn, Manuel Reyes, Jochem van Tolph. Bea Borgers
