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.