Candice BreitzMother + Father, 2005
‘Mother + Father’ is a two-channel video installation by Candice Breitz that explores the formation of parental archetypes through mainstream cinema. Drawing exclusively from footage of Hollywood films, the work isolates emotionally charged performances of mothers and fathers, performed by well-known actors across different genres and decades. On one screen, ‘Mother’ presents a rapid-fire montage of maternal characters – tender, hysterical, nurturing, manipulative – while the adjacent screen, ‘Father’, mirrors this with paternal figures who are stern, affectionate, volatile or distant. The selected clips are edited so that the characters appear to speak directly to the viewer and to one another, collapsing narrative boundaries and original contexts.
Breitz’s precise editing transforms familiar cinematic roles into distilled portraits of cultural expectation, exposing how mass media produces and circulates highly codified models of parental behaviour. The absence of any storyline or context heightens the emotional intensity of the performances, creating a chorus of parental authority, affection and dysfunction. By stripping the scenes of narrative coherence and presenting them in constant, almost overwhelming succession, ‘Mother + Father’ reflects on how we inherit emotional scripts from popular culture and internalise ideals of family, care and authority. The work is both humorous and unsettling, prompting viewers to question how deeply cinematic portrayals have shaped their own experiences and perceptions of parenthood.
