Love and Labor. Intimacy and Isolation. Care and Survival.

A performance between mothers and children in a state of lockdown  

(Video by Maternal Fantasies collective, 23 minutes, Germany, June 2020)

Who cares for whom and what are the consequences? The feminist art collective Maternal Fantasies lets viewers peak into their homes, where artistic production exists alongside domestic tasks and childcare. Household items become toys and props. Kitchens become backdrops. Care work and parenting have historically been marked by gender-based inequalities, yet the current conditions of social distancing have acutely magnified these injustices.  Against this backdrop, the performance seeks to understand “mothering” not as a physical and fixed category or identity, but instead as dedicated time, attention, nurturance, protection and an interrupted state of mind. As the pandemic transformed the way in which we operated as mothers and artists, we created this online performance from within our homes to make visible that care work is more essential than ever. 

The video presentation will be followed by a Q&A with Maternal Fantasies members Magdalena Kallenberger and Isabell Spengler.

The performance was specifically developed for Fantastic Futures, the Advancement Award Exhibition at M.1 of the Arthur Boskamp Foundation. The video was commissioned by and premiered at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in the context of the New Alphabet School #4 Caring program.