When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker

Maria Marshall British, born India

Not on view

Marshall’s mesmerizing scenarios of maternal fear and dread strike at the heart of Western culture’s commodification of childhood. For this work, she shot film footage of her two-year-old son playing with a fake cigarette and added wisps, rings, and puffs of smoke, generated using Hollywood special-effects software. The video is both frighteningly real and blatantly fictitious, echoing the anxious internal monologue of a new parent. “Jake was only two and I was projecting on him a future as an addict,” Marshall explained in an interview. “He could be addicted to anything, drugs, alcohol, chain-smoking. How can a mother control these things? I was afraid of what would become of him. How does a mother calm herself and learn to let her children just be?”

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.

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Still

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, Maria Marshall (British, born India, 1966), Single-channel digital video, transferred from 35mm film, color, silent, 19 sec.

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