The New Yorker
Edith Maybin, July 21, 2008
For complete article see: www.newyorker.com/art

Eyemazing Magazine
Artists Issue 02, 2008
For complete article see: www.eyemazing.com

The Times, London, UK,
Nancy Durrant, Meet the Young at Art, May 26, 2007.
For complete article see: www.timesonline.co.uk

Maybin’s images – rich, dreamily lit, almost vintage in their feel – are deceptive. A beautiful girl stands in a room wearing old-fashioned underwear. Look a little longer and you realize that the girl’s body is that of a slender woman, but her face is that of a six-year-old. It’s very unsettling.

This chimera is created by Maybin using her own body and her daughter’s face, to explore the subject of mother-daughter relationships.

“We set up a little play act – she would mimic me and I would mimic her so that I could digitally put it together.”

The subject is one that Maybin feared at first might be clichéd, but her own experience of motherhood made her realize that there was still more to be said. “There’s so much rubbish talked about that just isn’t what mothers go through,” she says. “There are very strong structures still of what’s expected of her, how she is to perform. I think there’s still a strong Victorianism about how we approach family and work.” She deals with the taboos of motherhood, the fears involved for the child and for one’s self; of the daughter growing up, of losing her and the difficulty of carving out an identity in the space between one’s own mother and daughter.

It’s cerebral stuff, but Maybin plays a subtle game and the viewer isn’t bludgeoned into complicity. The images are undeniably and deliberately beautiful and you can choose to leave it at that. “But you might care to look further,” says Maybin, “and those are the people I want to have a conversation with.”

Also featured in:

Flash Forward 2007,
Magenta Publishing for the Arts,
Fall 2007

InStyle Magazine UK:
Get Arty, July 2006

British Journal of Photography,
Students Set to Capitalize, May 24, 2006

Art of England:
This Month Brick Lane, June 2006

British Journal of Photography:
Range Rover, June 14, 2006

Advanced Photoshop:
Edith Maybin Talks Us Through Her Style of Art, Issue 19, 2006