Monica Sjöö: The Great Cosmic Mother at Modern Art Oxford
Jelena Sofronijevic, gowithYamo
December 2023
Police twice removed the painting ‘God Giving Birth’ from public display in the 1970s; from a small town hall in St Ives, and Swiss Cottage Library, in northwest London. Its maker, the Swedish-British artist Monica Sjöö, was threatened with prosecution for blasphemy and obscenity, for her spiritual depiction of a Universal Mother. ‘God Giving Birth’ became so controversial – and mythologised – that even Maggie Parks, Sjöö’s ‘lifelong friend and co-conspirator’ had only ever seen it in poster form, prior to its hanging at Modern Art Oxford (MAO).
Elevated in its display on the walls of this exhibition, it is both a symbol of the miracle of childbirth, the status of ‘mad women with delusions of being the Mothers of God’, and deeply rooted in the artist’s difficult experiences of motherhood. It only exposes how conservative Britain remained during the ‘swinging sixties’, reflecting the attitudes of those in positions of relative privilege, and other women. (‘She was pissed at Barbara Hepworth for not backing her,’ Parks adds, in reference to the work’s first removal.)
After this experience, Sjöö had the work guarded for fear of its destruction, and eschewed an emerging career as an individually exhibiting artist, for group exhibitions with other women. Indeed, save for two connected and mobile exhibitions in 2022, at Beaconsfield and Feminist Library in south London – Sjöö has had few solo exhibitions at all.[…]