Searching for a Mother

Mille Kalsmose has put herself on stage, and has actually contacted another woman to replace and fill the role of a mother. Many years after her biological mother’s suicide, Kalsmose has now begun the process of applying for approval for legally binding adoption.


The installation is a visual narrative in which she and her new mother perform as a real physical mother and daughter. These situations are captured by the Spanish art photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix in original black/white portraits showing Kalsmose and her new mother trying to imitate other mothers and daughters in their home, and thereby seeking to tell the story of a real mother and daughter.


In this artistic intervention, Kalsmose consciously attempts to use the mediated family production of the ideal mother-daughter relationship as a goal and a path to seek happiness, and in that way to focus on what, for many, is perceived as a “natural” relationship: that between a mother and a daughter.