Mary Kelly (born 1941, Fort Dodge, Iowa[2]) is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer.
[5] Kelly is Judge Widney Professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design of the University of Southern California.
[6] She was previously Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was Head of Interdisciplinary Studio, an area she initiated for artists engaged in site-specific, collective, and project-based work.
First shown at the ICA in London 1976, Post-Partum Document was made up of six sections and 135 smaller units — accompanied by a number of essays and footnotes — consisting of different objects from Kelly's newborn son's life.
This unusual subject matter caused outrage and controversy at the debut exhibition because some viewers believed that displaying excrement on used diapers at an art gallery was not appropriate.
[12] According to art historian Lucy Lippard, Post-Partum Document "outlines social interference into the 'ideal' relationship of mother and child (or artist and object) in terms of desire, presence and absence.
"[15] For Lippard, and other art historians, this project must be considered within a feminist discourse of consciousness-raising, collaborative work, and discussions about sexual division of labor.
[13] Additionally, Post-Partum Document deploys a distanced and seemingly objective look at being a mother and discusses the creation of subjectivity, something many of the male artists during Kelly's time avoided.
Art historian Griselda Pollock wrote that this "pattern of repeat and inversion evokes both a visual register of sound waves and images of pulse and flow as well as recalling the structure of biological life, the helix.
The Ballad of Kastriot Rechepi then "evokes the photographic visual effect while yet bearing no image, and staging no sight again performs a constant Kelly move: to stage in a created art work a commentary on the modes of seeing and knowledge typical of our cultures and media, one face of our creation through the interface with these signifying systems as social subjects.