Delivery to the Mother

The position is the same. Kneeling, with her back to the audience, vulnerable. But there is no longer a whip. No longer a back reddened by punishment. What there is now is a mother.

This photographic series was born from a specific moment: the artist's mother traveling from Mexico to the United States for the first time in three years, upon learning that her daughter was suffering from a deep depression. She came to care for her. The artist knew that what she was being asked to do was not easy—witnessing a daughter's breakdown from another country is an act of love that carries its own weight—and for this reason, the decision of how to photograph her was equally careful. The mother appears covered by a black lace shawl, the type of veil used in Spain for mourning, a direct inheritance from her Spanish ancestors. Only her hands are visible, touching the artist. Present, yet veiled. Steadfast, yet in mourning.

Donald Winnicott describes holding as the maternal function of support: a presence that needs neither words, nor suffocating proximity, nor solutions. It simply needs to be. The mother in this image doesn't appear broken, she doesn't lean toward her daughter in a gesture of urgency or despair. She sits, firm, with the solidity of something ancient. Her physicality there was enough. For the artist, allowing herself to be cared for like a baby seemed like too much—but the physical presence of her mother, shrouded in mourning, at her feet, was exactly what she needed. No more, no less.

The artist views this encounter as a ritual. The mother doesn't appear here as an everyday or domestic figure, but as something more mysterious and more powerful: a presence that welcomes without devouring, that cares without demanding, that bears the mourning for her daughter without collapsing beneath it. And the daughter, who in the previous piece held the whip in her own hands, now lets go. She surrenders. The back that once received blows now receives hands.

The mother looking straight ahead. The daughter on her knees, surrendering herself to her.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. Hogarth Press. [Spanish translation: El proceso de maduración en el niño. Laia, 1979.]