Scope and Contents

Mary Kelly is an American artist and theorist who is known for her indexical series combining text and image. Her work first came to prominence with Post Partum Document (1973-79). Kelly inquires into the construction of cultural identity from a feminist and psychoanalytical perspective. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The first exhibition of this six part work was in the 1970's. The book is a reprinting of Kelly's conceptual feminist work that was typed in lowercase letters. According to Lucy Lippard, the general theme of the work is "removal, distancing, the weaning process that characterizes socialization and all relationships... and the subject's awareness of the ideologies that rule her experiences." As Kelly herself writes in 1973 in the opening statement, "In the Post-Partem Document, I am trying to show the reciprocity of the process of socialization in the first few years of life. It is not only the infant whose future personality is formed at this crucial moment, but also the mother whose 'feminine psychology' is sealed by the sexual division of labor in childcare."Rachek Warriner (internet); Kelly has made works that examine complicated social issues such as the ramifications of war, and the politics of how our identities are constructed. In Post Partum Document, she was engaging in a...