Mother’s Milk (re)constructs the story of Ilse, the author’s grandmother. Alienated in the psychiatric hospital of La Timone, in Marseille, Ilse resided there from 1952 until her death in 1983. Bringing together archival material, correspondences and conversations narrated via documentary poetry, Marie Ilse Bourlanges assembles the fragments of a family history hiding in plain sight.

An undertow of embodied memory meets the flow of institutional remembrance, drawing parallels between the discarded material of archives and the necessary mechanisms of physiological forgetting. Mother’s Milk offers an intimate journey into madness, intergenerational trauma transmission and the role of artistic research in imagining a possibility of healing.

ISBN 978-94-92852-74-8
Author Marie Ilse Bourlanges
Introduction text Marta Pagliuca Pelacani
Editor Marta Pagliuca Pelacani

Graphic design Alix Chauvet
Number of pages 348
Book size 15.5 x 24 cm 
Binding hardcover thread sewn binding/ special edition offset duotone with metallic and mat ink
Printer drukkerij robstolk®
Lithography Alex Feenstra
Language English
Release date January 2023
Publisher Jap Sam Books