In Her Image features three self-portrait busts, collaboratively made by the artist and her two young children using recycled silk and handmade rice paper – materials that are often used in the domestic setting.
Rejecting traditional bronze or stone, MeiMei Hodgkinson subverts material hierarchies, elevating fragile, everyday media to the realm of monumentality. Historically, busts immortalise power, preserving singular legacies. Here, they instead capture motherhood – an undervalued yet transformative experience.
By casting herself as the subject, Hodgkinson reclaims the artistic canon’s narrow view of significance. The works further destabilise conventions through collaboration: her children’s mark-makings disrupt notions of authorship and skill. Their participation challenges institutional definitions of rigor, proposing that art’s value lies not in solitary mastery, but in the traces of shared making.
About the artist
MeiMei Hodgkinson is an emerging Chinese Australian multidisciplinary artist who currently lives and works on Bunurong and Wadawurrung lands. Through photography, sculpture and textiles, MeiMei challenges the boundaries between fine art and traditional craft, while blending the visual languages of Eastern and Western cultures to reflect the complexities of her own bicultural identity.
Inspired by her experiences as a first-generation migrant artist and mother, MeiMei’s work is driven by autobiographical narratives, exploring themes around migrant identity and motherhood. She often incorporates materials and techniques traditionally used by women throughout history to subvert the hierarchies of materials in art ecologies, challenging the concept of permanence and monumentality.