Mothering is not just a moment in time.
Mothering is ancestral, ambivalent, unstructural.
Mothering is all of us.
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 Mogli, Rastras Negres En Libertad, 2021 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 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 6th August to 19th September, Mothering/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. Mothering/Mãe is the child of artist and Kupfer’s co-director Penelope Kupfer
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, Sarah Kate Wilson.
Mothering/Mãe 2nd July – 6th August Kupfer @kupferproject
Full list of events kupfer.co/exhibitions/40/overview/
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.
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
Devote Your Attention, 27/07, 6pm: Sarah Kate Wilson
Lecture by Rose Davey
09/07: 2 pm
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.
Installation:
Domestic Strata, 2022, kitchen at Kupfer, Harriette Meynell
Please Touch, 2022, throughout the Kupfer project space, Hoa Dung Clerget
