An octopus has three hearts

I created this series while pregnant and after giving birth to my first child. “Discovering an octopus has three hearts,” I think, is significant in terms of the theme of this series; becoming a mother challenges you to grow extra hearts which can feel deeply profound and very frightening at the same time. After the Octopus gives birth, she dies. And so this also reflects what we go through after giving birth, we literally have to “die” in order to give birth to our new selves as mothers. I also explored how the mother-child relationship changed over time, with images of a mother and her young adult daughter. Even though her daughter is a young adult, she will always be her “baby”. Mothers never stop worrying about their children. Even though the umbilical cord has long been cut, there’s this invisible cord that deeply connects us to our children. We feel their pain, their joy, they are in our cells, and we are in theirs.

An Octopus has three hearts, 2017 - 2018.