Composed of seven interdisciplinary artists/mothers and ten children, MATERNAL FANTASIES takes the social invisibility of the maternal experience as a point of departure to produce films, images, and performances of fantastical visibility. Through personal writing exercises and collective performance scores, they align themselves with ancestral figures of feminist discourses and artmaking, in order to establish new vocabularies and narratives around the maternal for future generations. This exhibition shows documentation and video work by the collective in combination with Riso prints collectively produced by participating artists outside of the collective during the two-day workshop at Onomatopee.
One of the photo images from the publication is mounted larger-than-life as a wallpaper in the presentation in combination with two video works by the collective, facilitated by simple self-constructed cardboard furniture which visitors of all ages are invited to decorate.
Central to the presentation are prints from the two-day Riso workshop made prior to the opening and presented with objects, tools, and materials used for reproductional labor such as (rotary) clotheslines, and wall drying racks. Through personal writing exercises, photography, and drawing inspired by the collective’s developed methods, as found in the publication, the participants have aligned themselves with ancestral figures of feminist discourses and artmaking. While taking these starting points as a common ground, their goal is to establish new vocabularies and narratives around the maternal for future generations. This collective reflection and dialogue between members of
MATERNAL FANTASIES and other feminist makers, caregivers, and artist-mothers form a significant contribution and important layer to the presentation and MATERNAL FANTASIES approach to feminist practices.
