Simona Koutná: Of Dogs and Daughters

Onomatopee, 2024, softcover, 64 pages, 11.4 x 17.1 cm

"In the lobby and the dining room, Guiseppa's walls are decorated with fairy-tale stills depicting digitally generated Disneyland scenery, occupied by the most famous of Walt Disney's characters. Then, in Giuseppa's own room, I found the first trace of Perdita's Dalmatian family in the form of incidental black-and-white spots on a framed portrait of St. Teresa. Giuseppa became a surrogate mother to me during my stay. I was not her daughter, but I was a daughter striving to understand." Of Dogs and Daughters brings a compelling record of female artists and writers, whose voices have been documented and collected through friendships and chance encounters. Combined with found material that proposes dog-human perspectives, this book attempts to redefine the mother-daughter relationship through a surrogate lens, exploring images of closeness, of anxieties conjured up by film franchises and mechanisms of nostalgia aimed at caregivers and children.