A group of Vancouver-based artist mothers, featuring: Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, Matilda Aslizadeh, Robyn Laba, Natasha McHardy, Maria Anna Parolin, Heather Passmore, Sarah Shamash, prOphecy sun and Damla Tamer. The group is a unique collective working within the intersections of feminism(s), motherhood, reproductive and artistic labour. Many of art/mamas members identify as womyn of colour and immigrants.
April 28, 2023 | Access Art Gallery | 6 pm to 8 pm
You are invited to the book launch of art/mamas: Intermedial Conversations on Art, Motherhood and Caregiving (2023). This publication emerges from our PLOT residency at Access Gallery in Vancouver during the fall of 2021. The works, texts, and images presented herein reflect this generative process while also pointing to other resources, mediated spaces, artworks, artforms, and dialogues. From digital art, to zoom recordings, to drawings, curated film programs, artist archives, poetry, photography, sound art, performance, painting, sculpture, social movements, and blog posts, this publication encompasses an interconnected, intergenerational, and intermedial meditation on art and motherhood as expanded fields of knowledge production. We hope you can join us in this celebration!
Published by the art/mamas with the generous support of Access Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC). We are grateful for all of the support in making this project possible.
About art/mamas
art/mamas is a group of Vancouver-based artist mothers, featuring: Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, Matilda Aslizadeh, Robyn Laba, Natasha McHardy, Maria Anna Parolin, Heather Passmore, Sarah Shamash, prOphecy sun and Damla Tamer. The group is a collective working within the intersections of feminism(s), motherhood, reproductive and artistic labour. Many of art/mamas members identify as women of colour, immigrants and queer bodies.
ART/MAMAS Intermedial Conversations on Art, Motherhood and Caregiving
Stay tuned for the official launch of our publication in the coming months! w/ prOphecy sun, Gabriela Aceves, Maria Anna Parolin, Matilda Aslizadeh, Sarah Shamash, Damla Tamer, Robyn Laba, Natasha McHardy and Heather Passmore, Access Gallery.
The Precarious Academic labour and Motherhood conversations is the second event organized by the art/mamas as part of the PLOT art residency at Access Art Gallery.
In this exploratory conversation, Matilda Aslizadeh, Damla Tamer and Maria Anna Parolin invited Elisa Baniassad, Sarika Bosse, Annabree Fairweather, Sunny Nestler, Magnolia Pauker and Terra Poirier to consider how does the absence of predictable, stable employment in academic institutions affect working mothers and caregivers? What are the particular pressures and possible responses to economic precarity when situated within the demands of ensuring stability, security, and meeting the material needs of children and others in our care? Are there ways in which we can create broad-based networks that support collective organizing and caretaking beyond normative models of the nuclear family?
About the Speakers:
Elisa Baniassad (she/her) is a mother of two, an Associate Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia, and has the privilege of being the chair of the Status of Women Committee for the UBC Faculty Association. Elisa teaches Software Engineering, in the department of Computer Science, and has spent time reflecting on the very different experiences women and mothers in particular have in this male dominated field.
Sarika Bosse is a long-term contract academic in the Department of English Language and Literatures at UBC. She taught the first-year writing course for many years until it was taken out of the department in 2020. She feels lucky to be able to teach in her specialist disciplines of Victorian and Children’s Literature, and this past summer she did some marathon development of 2 online courses for the department’s new online minor, to be piloted this fall. She has been serving in the UBC Faculty Association for many years, first on the Contract Faculty Committee as a committee member, and since 2014, as the Contract Faculty Committee Chair. She was also on the CAUT CAS Committee, first as a committee member for 3 years, and then as the Chair for the last 4 years. She has attempted to address the needs of her fellow contract academics in a variety of ways, which range from connecting them to appropriate union resources and encouraging involvement in union work, to organizing monthly pedagogy sessions to strengthen their skill sets, and convening an annual symposium and publication display to showcase both their pedagogical and academic work. She has given regular talks and workshops at conferences on precarious academic labour. Through her years of working with my precariously employed academic colleagues, she has learned about the challenges unstable work brings to their personal lives, and to the profession as a whole.
Annabree Fairweather (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC). She holds a Master of Science in experimental Psychology and a double major Bachelor of Arts and Science in French and Psychology, as well as a Labour Relations-Management Certificate. Annabree has worked in post-secondary academic labour relations union-side for over a decade in British Columbia and Alberta. She has experience representing contract faculty rights in bargaining and labour disputes, as well as personal experience as a contract faculty member. Prior to her career in university labour, Annabree was a published researcher and a contract instructor at both the college and university level. When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time with her wife and two children and distracting herself with hobbies, which include stone sculpture and playing the piano.
Sunny Nestler is an artist, writer and humble guest living on unceded Coast Salish territories belonging to the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. Sunny teaches drawing and science courses at ECUAD, where they have been a non-regular faculty member since 2013. They are currently a representative on the executive committee of ECUAD’s faculty association (instructors’ union) and were previously a researcher to support collective bargaining. This academic year Sunny will be a Faculty Writing Associate at ECUAD’s Writing Centre. Their past work includes gallery exhibitions, collaborative animation, community-led arts programming, a recent municipal commission, and thirteen years co-managing community bike shops and other collective-run spaces. Sunny is currently working on several studio projects including an artists’ book and a virtual reality experiment. Sunny is a binge learner and loves to devour everything about a subject on a practice-makes-perfect (or practice-until-distracted!) basis. Most recently including pottery, learning French on Zoom, and ocean kayaking.
Magnolia Pauker is a Lecturer in Critical and Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design on traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. In the final stages of writing her dissertation, “Learning in Public: Relational Pedagogies as Future Forms of Care,” Magnolia’s practice takes up what she terms the philosophical interview as a model for caring critical engagement, knowledge production, and transgressive critical pedagogy. Sketching the edges of cultural and critical studies, philosophy, journalism, and critical media studies, Magnolia strives to engage conversation and awareness of intersectionality that acknowledges how multiple oppressions are experienced simultaneously and thus are inextricable from one another. For it is precisely through these complex entanglements that we are bound together. She is co-editor of Inter Views in Performance Philosophy: Crossings and Conversations(Palgrave Macmillan 2018).
Terra Poirier is an interdisciplinary artist working with pinhole photography, artist books and installation. Her interests (which are informed by her experiences as a low-income, queer, teen mother) include labour, place and storytelling—especially whose stories are told and whose are erased. Terra is the creator of Non-Regular: Precarious academic labour at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, produced in collaboration with dozens of instructors, students and other artists. On Mothers’ Day 2021, Terra installed a response to the ongoing renaming underway at Grandview Park on Commercial Drive. Her iteration, Single Moms Chilling Park, speaks to the site’s history as a gathering place for low-income, single mothers. Previously Terra has taught video production and made short films which have screened worldwide.
Art Mamas acknowledge the generous support of Access Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC) for making this project possible.
The Film and Motherhood program is the third event organized by the art/mamas as part of the PLOT art residency at Access Art Gallery. In this conversation, Sarah Shamash, prOphecy sun, and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda engage with filmmakers: Jules Koostachin, Nadine Valcin, Preta Performance, Clare Yow, Ghinwa Yassine, and Maternal Fantasies. Marlene Yuen responded visually to the conversation.
This conversation was accompanied by a parallel film and motherhood curatorial project comprised of four programs: Experimental Shorts (online), Intimate Portraits (online), a Feature Length film (online), and Gallery Screening (in person). Curated by Gabriela Aceves Sepulveda, Sarah Shamash, and prOphecy Sun, the films all speak to the complex relationships to, engendered by, and toward motherhood.
As we adapted our program to the conditions of the evolving pandemic, these works are selected from our local context on unceded Coast Salish territory in Vancouver and from international artist-filmmaker-mothers. As practicing media artists and mothers, we considered the roles and challenges of motherhood as explored through the diverse and culturally specific perspectives in the film and video programs presented. The diverse selection of films and videos on varied interpretations of “motherhood,” taken as a whole, self-reflect on the condition of being an artist/filmmaker today.
Participating Artists for Feature-Length: Sylvia Morales
Exhibiting Artists (onsite screening): Ariel Kirk-Gushowaty Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Freya Zinovieff, prOphecy sun Sarah Shamash prOphecy sun Freya Zinovieff Sai Di, Jelena Markovic, Guadalupe Martinez, and Dalia Shalabi, Anna Zoria
The online program was hosted at VIVO Media Arts: https://www.vivomediaarts.com/archive/film-and-motherhood/
The on-site program was screened at Access Art Gallery: https://accessgallery.ca/event/conversation-3-film-and-motherhood
Art Mamas acknowledge the generous support of Access Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC) for making this project possible.
In this conversation, Matilda Aslizadeh, Natasha McHardy, and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda from the Art/Mamas hosted Margaret Dragu, LaTiesha Fazakas, Karen Knights, Elizabeth MacKenzie, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Jin-Me Yoon, and Marlene Yuen to discuss the impacts of motherhood on their artistic and curatorial practices and consider the shifting historical moments shaping possibilities for artist-mothers in Canadian visual art institutions, art schools, and within the culture at large. Marlene Yuen responded visually to the conversation.
Together they traced the continuing history of individual and collective organizing that have and continues to create opportunities and support for artist mothers, along with the role that curators and archives play in generating and preserving these histories.
The discussion also explored projects and artworks that specifically address the subject and experience of maternity, understood through an inclusive lens. VIVO Media Arts hosted a web page with some of our guests’ projects: vivomediaarts.com/archive/intergenerational-gathering/
This conversation was the first event in a series of four events that are part of the Art/Mamas PLOT residence at Access Art Gallery (September-December 2021) organized in partnership with VIVO Media Arts and in dialogue with the Archive/Counter Archive project. Art/Mamas PLOT residency is possible thanks to the generous support of Access Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC).
During Art Mamas’ PLOT residency at Access Gallery, conceived of PLOT as a fertile place to scheme and gather as we create inclusive opportunities to share experiences, intergenerational knowledge, skills, ideas, and to support artistic experimentation by bringing together diverse and disparate communities of creative, working, self-identified mothers and caregivers. As such, we imagined PLOT as a laboratory facilitated by our members and looked outward to include other creative producers who are mothers/parents from the local community and beyond.
The residency was structured around four community conversations.
– CONVERSATION 1: INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUE OF ARTIST MOTHERS Sat 18 Sep 2021 12–1:30PM – CONVERSATION 2: PRECARIOUS ACADEMIC LABOUR AND MOTHERHOOD Thu 30 Sep 2021 7:30–9PM – CONVERSATION 2: PRECARIOUS ACADEMIC LABOUR AND MOTHERHOOD (PART II) Sat 02 Oct 2021 12–1:30PM – CONVERSATION 3: FILM AND MOTHERHOOD Sat 16 Oct 2021 12–1:30PM -CONVERSATION 4: MAKING SPACE FOR TIME: ARTIST PARENTS MEET AND MAKE Sat 30 Oct 2021 12–1:30PM
Art/Mamas is a group of Vancouver-based artist mothers, featuring: Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, Matilda Aslizadeh, Robyn Laba, Natasha McHardy, Maria Anna Parolin, Heather Passmore, Sarah Shamash, prOphecy sun and Damla Tamer. The group is a unique collective working within the intersections of feminism(s), motherhood, reproductive and artistic labour. Many of art/mamas members identify as womyn of colour and immigrants.
We are happy to announce the start of PLOT our residency at ACCESS Art Gallery.
We will be conceiving of PLOT as a fertile place to scheme and gather as they create inclusive opportunities to share experiences, intergenerational knowledge, skills, ideas, and to support artistic experimentation by bringing together diverse and disparate communities of creative, working, self-identified mothers and caregivers. As such, Art Mamas imagines PLOT as a laboratory facilitated by their members and looks outward to include other creative producers who are mothers/parents from the local community and beyond.
They have structured their residency around four community conversations. Each conversation will be facilitated by members of the collective and include invited speakers and participants. All sessions will be conducted virtually on Zoom in accordance with COVID-19 provincial health and safety protocols in BC. They will be open to the public and all self-identified mothers, including 2SLGBTQQIA community members, are invited to participate. Advance registration is required. The community conversations are:
Intergenerational Conversation amongst Artist Mothers
Precarious Labour and Motherhood
Film and Motherhood
Making Space for Time: Artist Parents Meet and Make
Art Mamas will also produce a final publication that will reflect the conversations and bring an analytical perspective to the discussions. The publication will also highlight any materials produced in conjunction with the conversations.
