I’m in the darkroom and there’s a picture in my mind, as well as on the easel in front of me. The negative in my enlarger depicts my two children; the image I see in my mind’s eye is of the artist Ruth Asawa, seated on the ground amongst her hanging wire sculptures. Woven through the frame of the photo, and twisted around the hanging wire works, are her four children. Asawa appears in the back of the frame, wearing a hat, her head facing down... working. The children that surround her crouch and sit, unspooling the wire. In the foreground a naked baby, all rolls and flesh, sits sucking on a bottle. The square black and white image created by Imogen Cunningham, a mother of three, in 1957 titled “Ruth Asawa and her children,” has come to occupy a special corner of my mind. The corner that has weeded out thousands of images, viewed over a number of years as a photographer, logging only the few that have had lasting meaning. The image occupies this place because it simply and beautifully relays a truth I know. The truth of an artist and mother, children and art living together, influencing one another, interrupting one another, children as assistant, children as source of strength and source of exhaustion. It exemplifies the focus and determination necessary to create art and life.///
I am in my mind with this image when I read an article in the New York Times in July of 2018 titled “ Curator Says MoMA PS1 Wanted Her, Until She Had a Baby.” In the article, Nikki Columbus, a Harvard graduate, curator and former editor of Artforum and Parkett, describes her experience with MoMA PS1 during the process of being hired as a curator at the museum. A process that was, according to Columbus, abruptly ended once she delivered her son. In 2019 MoMA PS1 settled the claim Columbus filed under the NYC Gender, Pregnancy and Caregiver Discrimination Act for an undisclosed amount, agreeing to rewrite their written policies designed to protect women as part of the settlement.
The image and the article compel me to research maternity discrimination and lead me to a Harvard study and the concept of the “Motherhood Penalty,” which describes the unconscious bias that institutions and society at large hold that women with children are less committed to their jobs, leading to lower wages, less opportunity for promotion and firings due to pregnancy. Men with children, however, are largely conceptualized as more responsible and committed to their employment because they are viewed as breadwinners. My research does not shock me. I don’t think it shocks many women. What does shock me is the visual disconnect between the messages seen on television, in print and on social media, celebrating the family and “baby bumps”, paired with the reality that the US is the only industrialized nation with no federal paid family leave.
I conclude that I am ignorant and decide to seek out information on women in the arts, who were or are also mothers.
The result of this research is a flood of beauty and depth of thought, of perseverance and well earned admiration. The exhibition, Designing Women III: MOTHER, brings together the work of twenty eight historical and contemporary artists and designers, all mothers, who have made or are in the process of making contributions to the art and design landscape. The exhibition is by no means comprehensive; it is but a sliver of the brilliance that exists.
To stand amongst the historical pieces included in Designing Women III: MOTHER offers a compelling look at the work and careers of the historical artists and designers, such as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Zeisel and Imogen Cunningham, noting the struggles that appeared along their paths of motherhood/creator and their eventual critical success. Living legends like Faith Ringgold, Maria Pergay and Loretta Pettway Bennett all of whom produced works, both political and formal, bridging the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement, serve as present day luminaries. To look at the works of many of the contemporary artists and designers exhibited, is to view the output of those that are in the struggle presently, navigating the roles of mother and artist/designer during a global pandemic. Their paths are still unfolding. They are the lives in process, the bodies of work still undetermined. Each a link in the chain of trailblazers.
Text by Tealia Ellis Ritter
Co-Curated by Crystal Ellis, Hillary Petrie, Stephanie Beamer and Tealia Ellis Ritter
Artists
