Re-Assembling Motherhood(s) / On Radical Care and Collective Art as Feminist Practices

Re-Assembling Motherhood(s) invites the reader to learn about and from Maternal Fantasies ́ feminist research and collective artistic practice on motherhood(s), care work and representation in the arts.
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. As both a handbook and an archive of feminist artmaking, this publication (re-)assembles maternal experiences, reflective essays, autobiographical writing, instructional scores, selected artworks, and a manifesto for a caring economy.

Maternal Fantasies is an interdisciplinary group of international artists and cultural producers based in Berlin. They shape the discourse on motherhood through collective artistic processes while enhancing the visibility of contemporary feminist positions addressing motherhood(s) in the arts. From writing autobiographical responses to classic feminist texts to devising performances using children’s games, their art practice favours inclusive community-oriented experiments as alternatives to traditional structures of art production. Bridging theory and practice, their strategy transforms research on motherhood(s), care work and representation in the arts into frameworks for immersive modes of critique.
Current members of Maternal Fantasies are Aino El Solh, Hanne Klaas, Isabell Spengler, Lena Chen, Magdalena Kallenberger, Maicyra Leao, Mikala Hyldig Dal.