Mothering is not just a moment in time.
Mothering is ancestral, ambivalent, unstructural.
Mothering is all of us.
Please access the viewing room of the exhibition here and of the public programme here.
It is when motherhood becomes a ready-made mantle that mothers are turned into their own ghosts. Yet, when open to its full range of possibilities, mothering is a fertile ground, a plentiful soil from which a multiplication of ideas and actions can flourish, including meditations on and responses to issues of freedom, desire, heritage, interdependence, inequality, hope, care, power, planetary health, reproduction rights, and choice.
Mothering is a collective investigation into motherhood.
By embracing a heterogeneous and intersectional definition of mother – everyone can mother – Mothering is a permanent platform for artist mothers and artists whose practices draw on motherhood. It welcomes the fantasies, struggles, dreams, longings, and concerns that (r)evolve around the many ideas and images of motherhood. It is an invitation to dream, negotiate and expand the horizons of the possible by reflecting on how to discard and unlearn social structures that exclude and undermine mothers and motherhood.
The aim of Mothering is to reject the deep-seated constraints that define the institution of motherhood, whilst openly and bravely embodying mothering as creative and radical potential.
The first edition of Mothering will take place from 2 July to 6 August at Kupfer, in Hackney, featuring a total of 17 artists, both parents and non-parents, whose works – including painting, sculpture, moving image and performance – approach motherhood from multiple angles. Then, from 06 August to 19 September, Mãe will move to 55SP in São Paulo, Brazil, where it will welcome a new group of artists. Moving forward, Mothering/Mãe will continue as an online platform and network, with the intention of becoming an annual event and expanding to other galleries and institutions worldwide.
Discover the video works from Mothering here
READING LIST
Participating artists:
Bruno Baptistelli
Lize Bartelli
Ingrid Berthon-Moine
Magda Bielesz
Joey Bryniarska
Rose Davey
Hoa Dung Clerget
Thalita Hamaoui
Maria Konder
Penelope Kupfer
Laima Leyton
Harriette Meynell
LaTosha Monique
Willy Nabi
Lucia Pizzani
Mogli Saura
Programme outline:
Besides the exhibition in the gallery space, the public programme includes performances, talks and lectures that will aim to unpack the idea of how mothering and being an artist co-exist.
Private view:
02/07: 4 - 8pm
Performances:
The Birth of The Disco Ball, 2/07, 6pm: Laima Leyton in collaboration with Zara Truss Giles
The Full Moon, 13/07, time TBC: Maria Konder
Lecture by Rose Davey
09/07: 2 pm
Please book your visit here.
As part of Mothering, Rose Davey will give a lecture on seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, titled Artemisia Gentileschi: A Response. Gentileschi’s paintings are inescapably framed by her personal story; a victim of rape at the age of seventeen, her career is often discussed as a post-traumatic reverberation of this event. However, Davey's lecture will focus on the work itself, what it shows us, and how it reveals the intellect of an artist whose gender led her to be assumed devoid of reason, rationality, and genius.
Book preview by Hettie Judah
14/07 6:30 pm
Please book your free ticket here.
Hettie Judah is a writer, senior art critic of the daily paper The i, and regular contributor to Frieze, The Guardian, Vogue, The New York Times, Monthly and Art Review, amongst others. She is a founder of artist-parents.com, the collective behind How Not to Exclude Parents: Some Guidelines for Institutions and Residencies. Hettie will be presenting an illustrated short talk based on the introduction of her upcoming book How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, 2022), which examines the presence of artist mothers in art history and the prejudice against motherhood both as a status and subject for artists. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
The event will take place in person at Kupfer, streamed and recorded at @kupferproject Instagram.
Talk by Pragya Agarwal
September - new date TBC
Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, visiting professor of social inequities and founder of research think-tank ‘The 50 Percent Project’ that examines gender and racial inequities around the world. She has held a Leverhulme Fellowship and senior academic positions in US and UK Universities for over 15 years. Pragya will be talking about her recent book (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman (Canongate, 2021) focusing on reproductive rights and choice, in light of the recent overturning of abortion rights in the US. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
The event will take place in person at Kupfer, streamed and recorded at @kupferproject Instagram.
Installations:
Domestic Strata, 2022, kitchen at Kupfer, Harriette Meynell
Please Touch, 2022, throughout the Kupfer project space, Hoa Dung Clerget
