Project details

Researchers	Weronika Zielińska-Klein
Project Leader
Duration	September 2021 – December 2022
Affiliated activities	ARE WE / WE ARE RESEARCH DAY

Weronika Zielińska-Klein – Matricentric feminism, critical self-organization, and autonomy is an artistic research project through which I connect the historical and current examples of mother-artists initiatives (collectives and networks) as a practical response to institutions and systems that have a long history of disabling or unwelcoming the work of mother-artists i.e. artists residency programs, museums, art schools etc.^{1, 2, 3, 4}

With this research, I bridge the gap between the post-colonial, feminist, and intersectional curriculum, WdKA claims to be building for a few years now, with the motherhood studies – discourse still nonexistent in the institution. 

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¹ In my research, I refer to the feminist’s reconceptualized understanding of the autonomy of the self, namely the relational autonomy, which taken further by Nel Noddings (among others), claims all autonomies, as in fact – relational. 

² The word mother refers to any individual – thus not limited to cisgender women – who engages in motherwork. See further Andrea O’Reilly; Sara Ruddick. 

³ When speaking about mother-artists, I refer to practitioners whose work is concerned with art (or any creative practice) as means for cultural production. Therefore, my research isn’t about artists producing objects of art that, for example, speak about mothering as an experience, but about artists whose experiences of mothering bring new insights into their ways of working and coming together as a community. Here, I build further on the term relational aesths-etics, introduced by Deirdre M. Donoghue.

⁴ E.g. the TransArtists’ AiR database lists six family and partners friendly addresses, from which only three are open for artists with children. For a more inclusive overview see the information gathered on https://www.sustainableartsfoundation.org/residencygrantees/