Mleko is a visual research project that is a reaction to my fascination with the substance of human milk and its elaborated nature. When in 2021 I gave birth to my first child I found myself with a new body, a body that produced this biological liquid that was “designed” to the needs of my new child. I became totally fascinated by this substance, and by the fact that what I knew about my own physical self has changed and transformed me, now my body is a maternal body.
Human milk (breast milk, mother‘s milk) is a biological liquid produced by mammary glands located in the breast of a human female. Breast milk is known as the primary source of nutrition for newborns; it contains fat, protein, carbohydrates, variable minerals, and vitamins, substances that help protect an infant against infection and inflammation. WHO recommends a min. of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding and min. of 2 years of supplemented breastfeeding. Breastfeeding has proven health benefits for both mothers and babies in high and in low-income settings alike.
Yet, less than 50% of babies worldwide are breastfed according to WHO. For decades, the commercial milk formula industry has used underhand marketing strategies to turn the feeding of infants into a multibillion-dollar business.
As Jacqueline Rose writes in “Mothers; An essay on love and cruelty”: “the supreme symbol of mother love is, of course, the breast, which reappears in modern discussions of motherhood”, which makes the subject of breastfeeding central and opinionated. Milk is breeching a gap between milk giver and child, between animal and human, between nature and culture, between self and other, between myth and world. All the personal, social, political, psychological, and physical aspects construct the very “simple” act of breastfeeding and the essence of human milk. MLEKO is a surface under which maternal body and its liquidly nature are performed. Through this project I explore human milk, but also all that flows with it: life source, physical pain, mental charges, overload of happiness, dependence, opinions as well as social, psychological and at core personal histories of the beginnings. I investigate diverse perspectives on human milk, through photography, texts, video and sound interviews with breastfeeding women, lactation experts, milk banks and milk donors, hoping it can become a more familiar topic and less of a taboo in social and private spaces alike.
