A major part of Chester’s practice engages with the maternal and the continual reconstruction of motherhood in response to the idealization of motherhood, and the changes in life, including (but not solely) the development of children as they grow up. Another aspect is the unrecognized mother’s labour and care as discussed in matricentric feminism. The unseen maternal practices are articulated within Chester’s work as present and pervasive with the raising which raising issues of motherhood and empowerment.

Maternal Selves

Static twenty-four-hour labouring, a contortion into an emergency caesarean – blood is lost. Sister and mother race to see the eldest with the new-born. Through a morphine blurring of edges and a spread on exfoliant sheets, a mother’s love wins out and in a thoughtless moment she says, ‘you look as though you’ve been run over by a bus’. A merging of interiority and exteriority without distinction of borders surfaces multiplicity.