Of Dogs and Daughters - Between Surrogate and Self

"In the lobby and the dining room, Guiseppa's walls are decorated with
fairytale 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.
The contributions by artists Carmen Dusmet Carrasco and Simona Koutná,
and writer Susan van Veen are complemented by the introspections of
memoirist Giuseppa and interlaced with passages from the novel The
Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) by Dodie Smith. Each voice
represents a unique personal account against a backdrop of deficient
social support, single parenthood and absent caregivers.