This project began as a hedge against life as a mother overtaking life as an artist.

Caring for another baby and ultimately, for three children, could make an artistic life shrivel. There have always been women artists, including very driven ones, who have never harbored doubts about the feasibility of straddling the line between motherhood and creative accomplishment. Motherload is not for them.

This body of work aims to show the result of making creative aspirations part of a larger often messy whole that includes children. These pictures show what is looks like when one tries to live in the world of your art in progress and live with your children simultaneously. The sleep deprivation of newborn life is only the beginning of the emotionally turbulent and physically draining rollercoaster that is motherhood.

Using a suspended camera to capture the aerial view of an infant’s first year of life, these images and video are a multi-layered, visual compendium. The project is not meant to capture a singular moment of care or tenderness, but instead aims to share the blur of cumulative, almost unregistered days of hazy, repetitive gestures of newborn parenting life.

Motherload is another example of Soren’s interest in impediments to the humanistic encounter. She intentionally mars the visual field with an accumulated experience, which questions what in our lives impairs our ability to really see.