New Maternalisms: Redux

May 12 — June 4, 2016 | FAB Gallery, 1-1 Fine Arts Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton

Opening Reception & Evening of Live Performance: May 12, 2016, 6:00 pm—9pm

New Maternalisms Redux is the third and last in the New Maternalisms exhibition series (following Toronto 2012 and Santiago 2014). It features five performance and project-based artists drawn from the first two exhibitions: Lenka Clayton, Jess Dobkin, Alejandra Herrera, Courtney Kessel, & Jill Miller. The work of these artists represents a spectrum of experience; it includes queer and straight identified mothers, single and partnered mothers, mothers of differently abled children, mothers of twins and singletons, and a range of race/class/economic privilege. Together they investigate the maternal as an important political and affective force.

Artists: Lenka Clayton, Jess Dobkin, Alejandra Herrera, Courtney Kessel, and Jill Miller

SCHEDULE OF OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCES:

6pm-9pm: Miller 24 Hour Family Portraits &
Dobkin Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar Tastings

6:30pm: Kessel In Balance With collaborative performance

7:30pm: Herrera Testing the Waters durational performance

A three-day colloquium, Mapping the Maternal: Art, Ethics, and the Anthropocene, was held in conjunction with the exhibition, with participants representing some of the most prominent voices on feminist art and the maternal today. The keynote presentation was delivered by internationally recognized feminist theorist and art historian, Griselda Pollock. This colloquium, open to the public, brought crucial thinking on the anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change together with thinking on the maternal as metaphor, practice, and politics.