Mother
MOTHER
May 16 – June 6
curated by Amy Herman
Featuring works from:
Opening Reception on May 16th from 6pm-9pm
with performances and readings from
Amy Bagwell + Xavia-Margrith Miles
MOTHER Curatorial Statement
Amy Herman
MOTHER is an attempt to make visible the essential work of mothers, to shed light on the absolute insanity that is childbirth, and to celebrate artist-mothers. This exhibition features thirteen artist mothers who are making work about motherhood.
The notes I took for this exhibition are scribbled on the back of daycare intake forms that I never filled out. It seems this is the way all non-urgent / non-baby related activities fit into life these days: in the in-between, on the backs, in the nights, and in the early mornings. Creating art, a non-vital act that also feels life-bringing, now trickles in to fill those cracks when it used to overtake like a tidal wave.
In my research for this exhibition. I read often about the metaphorical concept of the mother dying in delivery and being reborn as a new person, a dramatic claim but, at the very least, the mother must mourn the death of their previous life. My brain is permanently altered. It is hard to complete a thought without also considering if there are enough diapers at home.
I have created life, I have grown someone else’s bones and blood and hair (albeit not much, my baby is still nearly bald at 12 months) inside my body, and this life now exists outside of me. For the first six months of life the baby perceives themselves as the same person as the mother. Does the mother ever stop feeling this way? There is an unclear border between one being and another. Where does mother end and child begin? Why is there so much loneliness as a mother when you are now literally never alone?
When I first had my baby, I was taken aback at how rarely people talk about how hard being a mother can be. You give birth and suddenly there’s a new vocabulary: default parent, invisible labor, touched out. Concepts you maybe haven’t given second thought to prior to becoming a mother. The weight of taking care of another human being 100% of the time, the lack of sleep, the needs that are physically placed upon your body.
Because motherhood is raw and real and it’s asking someone else for permission to take a shit.
It makes me angry to live in a patriarchal society that puts so much emphasis on a mother giving birth to a child and raising that child and then doing it again, but that values its women and its mothers (and all parents!) so little that there is often not even an offer of parental leave from work. It takes a village, but the village has to work too.
And now that my daughter is turning one, it’s still hard. It will never not be hard, but I’m less angry now, and I’m more in awe of good mothers, of community, of loving families and partners and friends. I am in awe of those artist-mothers that find a way to continue to create art, even though they’ve created life, that they find a way especially now that they’ve created life. This exhibition celebrates them, exploring the angers and the joys and the combinations of the two that can only be understood once a child has entered your life.
This exhibition is dedicated to all mothers, but especially Sharon.
