Girl with Two Mothers

Girl with Two Mothers is a piercingly astute work in which Portuguese artist Paula Rego once again considers the subtle dynamics of the mother/daughter relationship and the roles and expectations imposed upon women within society. Deftly executed through an accomplished handling of scale and proportion, Rego effects a fantastical inversion of the mother/child embrace to create an unsettling parody of the filial relationship. The elderly mother, perched upon the knee of the seated protagonist, is literally transformed into a helpless, yet strangely threatening, child. The work pertinently questions the assigned gender roles for the guardianship of vunerable elderly parents; the presence of not one but two mothers leads us to presume that the girl is beholden to care for not only her own but also her spouse's mother. At the same time Girl with Two Mother's gestures towards the latent psychological tensions which undergird and bind mother to daughter.