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Mothers, Mirrors and Existential Methods
Research by Mayıs Rukel (2020, Gerrit Rietveld Academie)
Supervised by Paula Albuquerque
“There is no end to what a living world will demand of you.”
— Octavia E. Butler
Anchored in Jacques Lacan’s concept of the Mirror Stage, Donald Woods Winnicott’s notion of the good enough mother, and Alice Miller’s gifted child, Mothers, Mirrors and Existential Methods is a theoretical and artistic inquiry into the cultural, social, and symbolic implications of the act, and the temporal/spatial image, of mirroring.
The research approaches “the Mother” not as a fixed biological identity, but as a formative presence in early childhood; one entangled in complex cultural and political dynamics of care, gender, and representation. It reflects on the systemic, intergenerational conditions that lead to maternal crises, inherited trauma, and the lifelong tension between the False and the True Self, as understood through Winnicott’s framework.
In the case of artists, could their practice become the very method through which the mirrorless child seeks true reflection? From Ingmar Bergman’s films to Sylvia Plath’s poetry, from Marina Abramović’s performances to mythological narratives of Medusa, Narcissus, and more, a visual inquiry unfolds: How does reflection, or its absence, shape the formation of a cohesive "I"? How do artists metabolize its disruption through their practices, while facing the long-term somatic echoes of such rupture.
The mirror becomes a site for conflict transformation, consented distortion, longing for wholeness. Creative survival strategies emerge as existential methods; cultivating aliveness and reclaiming agency.
Through case studies including Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel, Marina Abramović, Nazmiye Oral, Ingmar Bergman, and fictional figures like Sophie from Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, the research explores art as both symptom and medicine. Heightened sensitivity and artistic insight become lifelines in the absence of honest, engaged reflection.
Born from and carried through a difficult reorientation of the maternal relationship Rukel experienced in 2019, the research weaves theory with deeply personal reflection, literature, and visual culture, inviting us to consider the poetics of reflection both as a metaphor, and as a foundational structure for survival.
Can artistic practice become an existential method;
an ongoing movement of healing?
Can research become a container of transformative grief?
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