Separation
The child
having been born (1st sculpture-as-icon), mother and child must
separate. Separation is both painful and joyous. Painful because both want to
cling to what they feel is theirs. Joyous because (the freedom to) a new life
beckons for both. Both mother
and child must (decide to*) tear themselves
apart. If mother and child separate (completely), both will live. If they
don’t separate (or only partially), both will die (or remain wounded). One side of the
mother, the animal side, holds on tightly to her offspring because she
experiences it as part of herself. She cannot bear the loss, indeed sacrifice
of (part of her-) self. Her other side, her wisdom side, pushes the child
away because she realises that the child, meaning she herself in/as her child
(to wit, her DNA), must create (i.e. elaborate) a new life for herself and by
so doing make real and
reflect back** to the mother the
mother’s own unrealised potential. The child’s
animal side seeks to remain within the comfort zone of the mother-and-child
relationship. The child wants to continue to suck. Yet the child feels the
need to seek freedom from her mother, meaning the freedom to become a free
and authentic being in its own right and bear off-spring. The
separation process is recursive for (that is to say, a part of) all creative
endeavour. *… The human cost of indecision, hence
incompleteness, is represented by sculpture-as-icon No 3, the ‘Split Man’. **… The universalised meaning of the
‘separation’ icon © 2016 Victor Langheld |
