Raising Children
/5
- Raising Children
- 2004
- video, 8 photographs, questionnaires, graphics, object
The work of Kateřina Šeda draws on personal stories which give insight into the intricate relationships between family members and people living in close proximity to one another. Šeda inverts the traditional gaze on these relationships by introducing new strategies for mutual living scenarios, strategies which also lead to new forms of interpersonal communication. In her video Copying Mother, Father, Child, Šeda inverts the gendered norms of family structures by questioning her own role as an individual adhering to diverse parental gender constellations. Mimicking the various behaviors of her parents, such as that of her mother hanging up laundry or her father raking the lawn, Šeda puts herself into the position of the adult and submits her parents’ stereotypical gendered actions to ironic treatment. In a third scene, Šeda plays the child and walks through the village between her mother and father, passing by neighbors and young parents pushing their children in strollers. Eventually, the threesome takes on an almost surreal aura as the colors of their clothes and of the architecture collide. W.S.