Nameless Faceless: Mother Goddess

Once the character has crossed the threshold, she finds herself searching for a mother-goddess.

Coming to this form, she sees a face in the center, upside down.

Something is familiar. She remembers it is her mother-goddess.

She does not know this mother and this mother-goddess does not know her. The goddess is nameless, faceless, and voiceless.

The character feels rage and pain and asks, “Why was my mother-goddess taken from me?”

The character feels a harrowing void that has been with her for her entire life. 

Artist’s Insight

Creating the work for this show reminded me how much I wished I’d had a goddess in the mythos of my upbringing. This lead me to a jolting and sobering realization: I was not without a goddess. There was a female deity in my life all along, a fragile fixture in the theology of my upbringing, a mother in heaven whose only mention is in two lines of a single hymn titled, ironically enough, Oh My Father:

In the heav’ns are parents single?

No, the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason; truth eternal

Tells me I’ve a mother there. 

  (italics added) 

This nameless Mother was far from the kind of goddess my soul so desperately needed. I was taught that she was unable to communicate and be present in my life, despite being my heavenly mother, despite her love for me, and despite the teaching that I would one day become like her. I was also taught that I was not allowed to speak to her in prayer, and that doing so could result in church discipline, including expulsion or excommunication.

Heavenly Mother was nameless, faceless, and absent.  It was soul-wrenching to me, being taught that I had a Heavenly Mother, but I was not allowed to have her be a part of my life. Her absence opened a deep and painful void. The irony felt unbearable. I’d had a goddess all along, another victim of symbolic annihilation. 

There are a few things about this design that may give a helpful door into understanding this composition. It is black, white, and gray to represent the loss of color and vitality, the discomfort of what could have been. It also represents the cut-and-dry nature of the theology: that this is how it is and how it should be, the “correct” way. I centered her face, representing her central place in Mormon teachings (if only by exclusion). By placing her upside down, our view of her is skewed, representing how she has been hijacked by so many forces. The bold marks symbolize the emotional rage and pain of my grief at her loss. The soft marks reference those in the Vanishing triptych earlier in the show.