The Mother Rubbings
What is the artist's role in collective grieving? How can art objects facilitate this communal process? Is it a communal or private affair?
The Mother Rubbings, 2020
Medium: Performance Object -Found paper (algorithmic graph paper), gravestone frottage (rubbing)
12" wide x 150' long
The Mother Rubbings was a durational performance (2020) in which I walked rows of graves, taking rubbings of every headstone marked ‘mother.’ It resulted in photographs, audio recordings, and this scroll.
This performance was a record of my grief: as I performed, I meditated on the surmounting loss of life due to COVID-19.
Currently, I am revisiting this work in light of my mother’s cancer battle.
“Echo and disintegration are themes that carry into the curated show, as well (this show is displayed side-by-side Kathranne’s as a companion). This is prevalent in Catherine Reinhart’s The Mother Rubbings, one of the artists included on the curated side. The charcoal words “mother,” and some “baby,” echo down a long, rolled-up sheet. The words ought to remind us of life, but actually these are outlines of titles on gravestone. Life and death is a known cycle to us—and it fades. Fades in vitality, fades in memory.” - From Essay by Wren Fleming, Oh, Repetition! | Curated by Kathranne Knight | Moberg Galleries - April 11, 2025 - May 17, 2025
Title: Mother I | Media: Frottage (rubbing) on hand-made paper (unframed) Dimensions: 8"h x 9"w | Price: $600 For Sales, contact Moberg Galleries at info@moberggallery.com.
Title: Mother II | Media: Frottage (rubbing) on hand-made paper (unframed) Dimensions: 8"h x 9"w | Price: $600 For Sales, contact Moberg Galleries at info@moberggallery.com.
Oh, Repetition! | Curated by Kathranne Knight
Moberg Gallery, Des Moines, IA | April 11, 2025 - May 17, 2025
I was so pleased when my friend Kathranne curated The Mother Rubbings into a group show alongside her brilliant work at the Moberg Gallery this Spring. This work was made during the long span of COVID. As galleries and museums were closed, this piece couldn’t be seen. Part of me was ok about that. It was, after all, partly a personal ritual to hold back the horrors of the newly tilted world. A world where time was compressed into daily death counts and charts mapping the spread.
I can still remember aerial videos of abandoned San Francisco.
Rumors of mobile morgues in NYC, set up in parking lots, filled with the dead.
During its creation, I made voice notes. Thoughts never sent about griefs unresolved.
Take a listen to one - Unknown Second Something.
In “Underland: A Deep Time Journey”, Robert McFarlane says the word for sign (in Greek) SEMA, is the same word for grave.
Can graves point the way? How can a cemetery, deep time assist in wayfinding through grief?
It sure helped me through.
The performance that created The Mother Rubbings was invisible.
No one (but my family) saw it.
It took place from March - July of 2020. I performed the piece twice weekly at the Ames Municipal Cemetery (Ames, IA) beside my home. I walked the rows of graves, taking rubbings of every headstone marked ‘mother.’
The objective of the performance was to record my grief during a time of social isolation: as I performed, I meditated on the surmounting loss of life due to COVID-19. The meditative actions of walking, kneeling, and tracing were akin to prayer or a ritual action in memoriam.
The performance resulted in an object: a graph paper scroll with rubbings of all the mothers in my local cemetery. By omitting their names and death dates from the scroll, I created an ambiguity in which the viewer can locate their own loss experience.
Before and after each performance, I read each mother on the scroll, documenting each reading in an audio recording. Further documentation includes photographs of my hands, covered in charcoal from the act of rubbing. My husband took these.
Zachary Reinhart, 2020.
Zachary Reinhart, 2020.
Zachary Reinhart, 2020.
For Oh, Repetition! , I composed them into a cadence. A triptych.
Full Disclosure: These photographs triggered a marital spat and a great (uncomfortable) discussion argument about labor, authorship, collaboration, and our marriage/working relationship.
What is the relationship between fine art photography and documentation?
Always talk more before acting, folks. That’s my hard-earned advice.
Zachary Reinhart & Catherine Reinhart, 2025.
“We all carry trace fossils within us – the marks that the dead and the missed leave behind. Handwriting on an envelope; the wear on a wooden step left by footfall; the memory of a familiar gesture by someone gone, repeated so often it has worn its own groove in both air and mind: these are trace fossils too. Sometimes, in fact, all that is left behind by loss is trace – and sometimes empty volume can be easier to hold in the heart than presence itself.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey
Traces. Remnants. Rituals. The cyclical unrolling of loss.
It is apt and timely that I am again musing on this work in light of the last year spent thinking about maternal mortality. My mother’s mortality. Thoughts that accelerated when her breast cancer diagnosis upended our family life.
She is now done with active treatment, and my caregiving assistance has slowed. Chemo, surgery, and radiation lasted almost a year, from June 2024 to March 2025.
I can now meditate on the grief I was keeping at arm’s length through striving and work. We will see where it leads.
Thanks for coming along with me.
