Refusal.
Joanna Szproch from Joanna’s Substack
The everyday fantasy is a refusal to participate in a game that was never ours — one in which you are awarded a medal made of suffering. Fantasy is a refuge so that we can play freely. Life is a ball to which we will not be invited a second time.
I have already done my part of the work. Now it is your turn. One sex was declared superior by a god you invented yourselves. A true god would not have committed such a blunder. Your god is not merciful — instead of illuminating, he destroys and punishes. I oppose this injustice and await a sign. It will come when life finally begins to matter. Life that is born. Because it begins at the moment when the creatress brings it into the world. Human females constitute half of humanity. They perform two-thirds of the world’s working hours. They earn one-tenth of the world’s income. There is one word for this: slavery. In a patriarchal society, parenthood is assigned primarily to the woman, though the word patriarchy derives from pater, meaning father. He, like a magician, produces with his magic wand and casts a spell upon her body. She usually gets very little out of it. The magic wand typically cannot even make her come, and the entire act of magic lasts only a few seconds. What happens to her body afterward? That is merely a side effect. What matters is what is taking shape inside — but only for as long as it remains there. The embryo and the entire body of its mother belong fully to the magician. He attributes the creation exclusively to himself, including the name he uses to mark his authorship and right of ownership. She is his property — a possession that, when it grows old, can be exchanged for a newer model.
The mother, meanwhile — empty, that is, stripped of her inner life — serves as an incubator. This is her natural purpose. She is not recognized as a person, and therefore possesses no Kantian value; only her function counts, from arousing an erection to fertilization. Her status rises in direct proportion to her level of suffering: the more she endures, the higher her podium. It is important that she smile throughout. Mothering — that is, the care of offspring — is sufficient reward. The mission has been fulfilled. In return, she is expected to provide care to everyone except herself. All of this so that the magician need not burden his genius with mundane matters. If these matters are so insignificant — why should we bother with them at all? Meanwhile, in approximately nine months — roughly 23,587,200 seconds — a new human being is born. Entirely without significance. Better to say: it doesn’t count. Motherhood, a biographical project? A trifle. (We usually depreciate the achievements of others when we envy them.) What is the essence of subjective experience? From the inside, I examine the experience of creating another person — negotiating our subjectivity. Where do I end and where does she begin? I observe my own needs. No one, after all, can know them better than I do. I pass this skill on to the new person — the skill of reading one’s own needs. It begins in my womb. Our fluids intermingle. I share my own minerals with her. If I give too much, I will not survive; if I give too little, she will wither. Creating a person, like creating art — these two experiences intersect time and again. I create someone/something; someone/something is born, and though at first I give it form, at a certain point it begins to live its own life, independently. Control contradicts love.
My own experience of motherhood and the need to create — as a need for expression and the continuation of one’s own existence — I examine as a fundamental human need. Art is not something exceptional — it is something deeply human. Mothering fascinates me — not as a role, but as an experience of relationship. Not as an identity, but as an ongoing practice. Not as a duty, but as a meaningful event. An event that transforms the ontology of the self. How a body makes a mind.It is also possible that something even more radical is at stake: whether the modern concept of autonomy was built on the repression of dependency. Whether the idea of a sovereign, separate subject is not in fact a construct — held in place, maintained? In this sense, mothering would not be a “feminine competence,” but a reminder of the structure of being. Relationality is not an addition to the subject — it is a condition of its existence. This does not, of course, mean that only women can embody this relationality. It means that the experience of pregnancy and early caregiving can reveal something about the human condition that has been philosophically pushed to the margins. Not the erasure of the mother, but the expansion of her significance beyond essentialism.
Mothering is a movement, not simply a role. It is a relationship, not a fixed category. In the background, however, the question of value remains. Why is that which sustains life less valued than that which produces market value? Why is care naturalized, while production is remunerated? Modernity separated reproduction from production, the private from the public, the body from the spirit. I examine this not in order to reverse women’s emancipation. Not to return to traditional roles. But to rethink the foundation. And perhaps this is precisely what was devalued within patriarchy: not only care work, but the knowledge that flows from relationality. It may therefore not be a question of who “can” care. It is a question of how to restore its ontological and social standing, without reinscribing it into gender asymmetry. This is not about moralizing or narrowing women’s roles, but about restoring significance to the activities that sustain the world — activities that create the conditions of existence. Mothering, in this view, becomes a practice that reveals the structure of social and biological life. A practice that shows that every autonomy is built upon dependency, and every strength upon sustenance. Care is not merely something performed out of necessity — it is an epistemology, a way of knowing that cannot be abstracted from the body, from emotion, from sensitivity. Love is paying attention.Love is the encounter of separate beings.Love is consent to difference.Why is work that generates market profit valued more highly than work that sustains life? Why does culture continue to marginalize care and relation, even though they are the foundation of all creativity, health, and social cohesion? This is also the moment at which fathers and men are confronted with a question: not “can I enter the space of care?”, but “how can I reclaim my capacity for care — a capacity that has been suppressed by cultural norms and structures of power?” At the same time, in the world as it stands, creative practice becomes for me a form of creative contestation: biological difference is not the wound — culture is, when it chooses amplification over resonance, division over balance. The aspiration is resonance, not erasure of difference. We need only look at where the transhumanist project is taking us to understand the stakes — deeper into exocapitalism. Mr. Freud — you were wrong. A woman knows what she wants. You are the father of psychoanalysis, but only from the perspective of an envious, short-range wand.
Care as fact, not ideology. It is important to distinguish between values and facts. Some values have a factual dimension. Destruction/construction is not a moral category — it has a real, measurable impact. Care is not exclusively a “feminine value” — it has a real, positive effect. Care is conservation, the sustaining of life, the maintenance of the condition of beings and things. Care must therefore be de-gendered and balanced with the need for solitude. The domains assigned to men — pleasure, play, experimentation, time for oneself — should not be seen as their rights, nor as undeserved by women, because these aspects are simply human. Also, this gendered concept of male entitlement to care and emotional labor concerns one’s self-responsibility. It can only be given voluntarily; it should never be taken for granted and should be offered only willingly and reciprocally.
Every healthy adult human is responsible for parenting themselves.There is a myth that a mother is by nature capable of altruism. Human altruism is an act, possible only when it arises from a conscious decision. To make a decision, a person must be a subject. If a woman is stripped of subjecthood, her sacrifice is merely a role into which she has been forced by socialisation, thus it is not altruism. The myth of the suffering mother — symbolized by the figure of the Pietà — suggests that suffering elevates and is inherent to women’s role. This myth needs to be challenged. In our culture, it is the woman who bears the burden - she also has to accept the role of her son, who loses his life saving us from war. But who invented the war, and what for? Why did we come to believe that we must conquer, and then we invented justification for dying for others? Why can we not simply stop killing and respect life from the moment of birth to natural death? Suffering should not be glorified — pain is a warning sign of dysfunction, an alarm, a threat to life. It signals that to survive, we must eliminate it. Of course, pain is part of our reality, but as humans capable of shaping that reality, we can help prevent suffering. Prevention is care. It involves attentiveness and tenderness. In our culture, it is indeed the woman who carries the cross, and it is our responsibility to lift that cross from her shoulders. Women are blamed for the declining birth rate, while motherhood is considered a purely private matter. This is an obvious contradiction. One cannot simultaneously treat birth as a matter of national concern and the mother’s well-being as a personal affair. If life matters from conception to birth, then it must matter afterward as well — in the real conditions of the mother’s life. If the body and mind of the mother are properly nourished, they are capable of doing good. The well-being of the mother is the foundation of a healthy society. The mother’s well-being is a matter of public concern!
My practice is a space of equality. As Laurie Penny observes, there is no such thing as good sex without equality. By analogy, there is no true creative community without equality and justice. My projects become a space where relationships are practiced and made visible. Shared artistic actions become a laboratory of social equality — where play becomes an organic way of gaining knowledge, freedom, and shaping culture. If being fully human means the capacity for play (Schiller), then play presupposes dignity, and dignity presupposes fair work and fair remuneration. My practice enters this territory as an alternative model to dominant structures: it shows that sustaining life, creativity, and experiment are not merely aesthetic values, but fundamental requirements of full human existence. Although we don’t share our surnames, I chose to carry Lena Hulpowska Szulc in my womb when I was only 22. One could say that for most of my adult life, I have lived as a mother, though I don't claim to have been a perfect parent; I tried my best. Since I turned 29, I have been her sole daily caretaker, caring for her as a single parent since she turned 6. Now an adult, she still shares a living space with me because she is continuing her education, and it remains the most financially manageable option for both of us. At the same time, art has also been my obsession since I was a child. This has felt as natural as breathing. I don't believe that being a mother could ever disturb my human ability to create. On the contrary, the experience of mothering is a matter I draw my inspiration from—my experience of negotiating our needs and boundaries, paying attention, agreeing to disagree, and reconciling, which has become the best source for understanding what individual autonomy and resonance mean, and this is an ongoing process.
Motherhood is not merely a subject matter — it is a perspective that cannot be borrowed. The experience of mothering as artistic and theoretical inquiry is inherently inaccessible from a male perspective. Not because men lack intelligence or empathy — but because this knowledge is bodily, relational, and lived from within. Experience forms the foundation of research. Practice comes before theory. What I contribute to artistic discourse is not a theme — it is entirely new epistemological territory. One that has been overlooked precisely because those in power within institutions have never had access to it. In two weeks, my work, Alltagsfantasie (Everyday Fantasy), will be showcased at the upcoming young European photography festival Circulation(s), one of France's most prominent photo festivals. Together with curator Carine Dolek and the festival’s team, we agreed to additionally incorporate, alongside the photographic installation, a participatory performance by my daughter and me for the opening. We will perform together, mother and daughter, on stage. Continuity. Transmission. Two bodies, two minds. Synchronization through non-verbal communication. Hoping the issue was universally relevant, we kindly requested support from the Institute for the Promotion of National Heritage of the country where we were born and still hold our passports. Unfortunately, our request was refused. The argument was given: “The project has strong promotional potential thanks to the prestigious institution and international networks; however, it is to a significant degree a personal, biographical project, without a meaningful public effect at the place of realization.” I naively believed I should earn recognition, not just because I feel entitled to it, but because I earned it through hard work, perseverance, and effort, despite all the hardships I’ve faced. I refuse to be a martyr. I never gave up, and I won’t until my death. I understand this is too dangerous.
Somewhere in the enemy’s intelligence files, the words of an undiscovered prophet were leaked: The crown doesn’t fall from our heads,even though you try so tirelessly to knock it off.Shame must change sides!The Good of the Mother is the Good of the Nation.You are cordially invited to attend for free on opening day, 21/03/2026. Opening hours · 2 pm to 7 pm Location · CENTQUATRE-PARIS (5 Rue Curial, 75019 Paris) More Info: https://www.festival-circulations.com/evenement/opening-2026/
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© 2026 Joanna Szproch
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