Motherflower is a ceremonial performance that combines art, music and poetry, invoking our connection to the feminine divine. The refrain of the piece is “Be Loved”, the healing command of the Mother.
Visually the piece consists of twelve paintings, each depicting an aspect of the feminine divine as it appears in my own dreams. At the center is a flower, sewn in rainbow colors, that embraces the participant in a cocoon-like, fragrant womb, while spoken word and sound collage with singing bowls create an environment rich in vibrational warmth.
The piece began as a feminist rant, outlining the fundamental psychological factors contributing to misogyny, a personal and cultural complex which exercises a profound effect worldwide. Intuiting powerful emotional values associated with each of these factors, I searched through my dreams for images with corresponding universal affects, images of what Carl Jung would call archetypes. There in my dreams I found goddesses in surprising configurations, identified both explicitly and implicitly through astonishing symbols. I also discovered that the dream archetypes do not always correspond to the meanings of the Gods and Goddesses that I was taught in school. Taken together with accompanying images which emphasize their significance, these dream formations indicate the evolution of divine feminine symbols within a changing culture in which existing complexes and biases about gender are in a process of reevaluation.
As of this writing, I have performed Motherflower three times in different countries, but not yet in the US. The piece is flexible and is still evolving, and this improvisational adaptability is part of what makes it such a powerful experience for the participants, because it can be done in a variety of forms to suit the circumstances.
In 2023 Motherflower performances took place in southern Ecuador and Prague, evolving unique forms as experiential, interactive ceremonies. The paintings and poems will soon appear in print under the title Goddess Arise! in World War 3 Illustrated #53: My Body, Our Rights. This publication will be in bookstores in June 2023.
