Femme des années 80 belongs to MOTHER!, a multidisciplinary art project in which Kosmatopoulos examines the mother-daughter relationship and the ways femininity is socially constructed and transmitted across generations. The series begins with the phrases through which a mother tries to prepare her daughter to become a woman.
“You must always be pretty.” “You must take care of your husband and your home.” “You must be a good mother.” But also: “You must be a strong and independent woman.” “You must stay free to do whatever you want with your body.” “You must never let any man stop you.”
Kosmatopoulos grew up hearing these instructions in the late 1980s. Her mother repeated them in an attempt to shape the ideal woman she wanted her daughter to become. Yet the woman described by these sentences could not easily exist. She was expected to care for a husband, a home and future children while remaining autonomous; to be attractive without allowing men to define her; to embody inherited models of femininity while also escaping them.
These contradictions do not belong to one mother alone. Within MOTHER!, the mother is not an absolute origin but one link in a longer chain. She passes on expectations received from her own family, culture and generation alongside the freedoms she has claimed for herself. Tradition and emancipation therefore reach the daughter through the same voice.
Each work translates one of these maternal instructions into a sculptural assemblage. Bras, ceramic vases, mirrors, feathers, wood, metal and domestic objects give physical form to a particular expectation. The sentence is no longer only spoken or remembered: it acquires volume, weight and balance.
A bra and a vase recur throughout the series. Both are associated with the female body, and both are forms designed to contain. The bra contains the breast, a soft and malleable part of the body, while imposing a predetermined silhouette upon it. The vase contains liquid, but is itself shaped like a simplified female body.
Neither container is neutral. Each holds a changing substance within a fixed form, determining its outline from the outside. Together, the bra and the vase give material form to the way femininity is contained, shaped and standardised through models that remain fundamentally arbitrary.
Once removed from their habitual uses, these familiar objects reveal how deeply social expectations are embedded in the forms of everyday life. They become structures through which the daughter is asked to imagine, organise and control the woman she is expected to become.
Femme des années 80 does not oppose a traditional mother to an emancipated daughter. It considers what happens when several models of womanhood are transmitted simultaneously, even when they cannot be reconciled. Some instructions offer protection, others impose limits, and many perform both functions at once.
The daughter does not simply reproduce or reject what she receives. She assembles herself within it.
