MARY KELLY is an American conceptual artist, feminist, writer, and professor of art and critical theory in the School of Art and Architecture at UCLA. She is known for her project-based work, addressing questions of sexuality, identity and historical memory in the form of large-scale narrative installations, including Post-Partum Document, a six-year exploration of the mother-child relationship. When it was first shown at the ICA in London in 1976, the work provoked tabloid outrage because Documentation I incorporated stained nappy liners. Each of the six-part series concentrates on a formative moment in her son’s mastery of language and her own sense of loss, moving between the voices of the mother, child and analytic observer. Informed by feminism and psychoanalysis, the work has had a profound influence on the development and critique of conceptual art.

Primapara, Bathing Series, 1974 (detail), silver gelatin print, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Acquisition Fund, in memory of Judith Mastai (Head of Public Programs, Vancouver Art Gallery).