M.A.M.A. Issue n.43 – María Linares and Margie Shaheed
Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 43rd edition of this scholarly discourse. Literature intersects with art to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA #artandmotherhood
September 2020: Art by María Linares, Poetry by Margie Shaheed
Art by María Linares
In a short video clip a black man introduces himself and tells about his life. The camera, turned by 90°, takes him in the classic portrait format, frontal view and shoulder piece, like the portrait format in painting and photography. “Hello. I am black. I am a ‘Negro’…” the story begins. The portrayed black man talks about his work in a cocktail bar, about the tourists – who are attracted to him because of his physical characteristics –, about his leisure activities and about his dreams of marrying a tourist so that he could go to Europe with her and weave only a few braids a day.
The man embodies in his portrait many negative stereotypes that are attributed to him on the basis of his appearance (as a prejudice) and thus presents many popular clichés about black Africans. Other clips, other performances follow: A young Colombian woman talks about her work as a drug courier, a construction worker from Poland about how he brought stolen cars from Germany across the border when his driving licence had not yet been revoked because of drunken driving. Vladimir, a sailor from Russia, drinks vodka all the time. The Iranian woman who hates America, the Indian woman who fears death by fire, the Italian woman who always dresses in fashion… The art project VIDEO PORTRAITS by Colombian artist María Linares, consisting of the short video clips, is a staging that sharpens and questions widespread prejudices. In the run-up to the project, prejudices and clichés about “others” were collected in a street survey and on this basis scripts for the roles of the VIDEO PORTRAITS were developed. The exaggerated statements of the performers on the prejudices around their own identity are intended to provoke the public and at the same time offer a way to reflect on the own prejudices concerning “the other”.
VIDEO PORTRAITS, 2008
The most negative prejudices and cliches relating to notions of nationality are filtered out by means of a street survey. From this material scripts are developed for performers playing out the roles in their mother tongue.
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Video still: © María Linares/VG Bild-Kunst
This initial research lead María Linares to continue with works such RE-ENACTING OFFENCES, an ongoing project started 2016 in Recife (Brazil) and followed by stations in Dresden (2018), Bogotá (2018) and Berlin (2019), that questions and explores established notions of racism and discrimination present in everyday life. The project is based on a sensibilization exercise by Berlin’s Anti-Bias Werkstatt (a network that follows an anti-bias approach and makes people aware of the “white priviledge” in society). In this ongoing project, the participants discuss their own passive and active experiences of discrimination in front of the camera.
RE-ENACTING OFFENCES, 2016-Ongoing
Video installation at three different shopping centres in Dresden, Germany.
The project attempts to question and explore established notions of racism and discrimination present in everyday life. Protagonists discuss their own experiences of discrimination on camera.
Linares’ projects are characterised by a growing sensibility on the importance of language and the numerous racist expressions present in our daily life, for instance the initiative to rename the so-called Day of ‘Race’ and Hispanicity, a holiday celebrated on October 12 in Colombia and other Latin American countries, that reminds a supposed “discovery“ of the Americas. RENOMBREMOS EL 12 DE OCTUBRE (LET’S RENAME OCTOBER 12) consists of a petition (www.change.org/12deOctubre) to rename this day, and of a database (www.renombremosel12deoctubre.org) that collects options for renaming this holiday. The database offers the users the option to participate and give their preferences on the alternatives for Renaming October 12. This project is also part of her research on the invention of human ‘races’. According to the Jena Declaration of 2019, the concept of ‘race’ is obsolete and should no longer be used.
RENOMBREMOS EL 12 DE OCTUBRE, 2019-Ongoing
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Encounter with Diana Quigua, researcher at Dejusticia for anti-discriminatory issues.
Photo: © María Linares/VG Bild-Kunst.
RENOMBREMOS EL 12 DE OCTUBRE (3 min extract): https://vimeo.com/42353865
An essential part of the project is to hold encounters with representatives of black and native communities, activists, ombudsmen for the rights of black and people of colour, as well as representatives of institutions that could submit a renaming law, with the aim to accomplish an official name change. The encounters are documented via photographs, videos and in a record book.
As a mother, María Linares’ artistic work is guided by a consciousness of legacy and the need to dismantle structural racism in everyday life and contribute to building an empathetic world for future generations.
Special thanks to Katerina Valdivia Bruch for editing the text.
More about Maria:
María Linares is a visual artist and researcher born in Bogotá, who lives in Berlin. She studied Fine Arts and Philosophy in Bogotá and holds two postgraduate studies, one in Art and Public Spaces at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and the other in Art in Context at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Currently, she is doing a practice-based PhD in Fine Arts at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Her main interests are interpersonal relations and her fields of work are public art, video and participatory art practices.
Words by Margie Shaheed
What I Wish I Could’ve Done
if i had the words of a dictionary
in my pocket i would shake them out
onto the floor piece sentences together
to form language to tell you the mysteries
of a mother raising nine children alone
i would stockpile all of the synonyms, adjectives and verbs
for “there’s not enough food” and “we have to move again”
in a raggedy white box with one thousand lit
sticks of dynamite erasing their charred tongues
from the human lexicon forever
The Hough Riots
it was 1966 mama told us hough avenue was on fire
ignited over a ‘no water for niggers’
sign posted at a white owned bar
burn baby burn rang out for six days
to neighborhood an urban war zone
at night mama cut off the lights in the house
darkness forced us to whisper
gathering at the windowsill like baby ducks
we peeked out hoping to catch glimpses
of army tanks rolling down our street
mama made it clear whose side we were on
we were black folks fighting for our rights
i wanted us to win
“What I Wish I Could’ve Done” and “The Hough Riots” were originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 17, 2019.
More about Margie:
Margie Shaheed was a community poet, writer and teaching artist and the author of seven books of poetry and prose, including Playground (Hidden Charm Press) and Onomatopoeia, Mosaic, and Throwback Thursdays (all from Nightballet Press). Her “Playground” stories can be found at www.timbooktu.com. Margie Shaheed passed away in 2018.
Violet Costello 'Bringing Home Baby' at Richard Saltoun
Violet COSTELLO:
Bringing Home Baby
15 September – 31 October 2020
Saltoun Online: Women 2.0
‘Bringing Home Baby’ is an online presentation by Violet COSTELLO, winner of the 2020 ‘Procreate Project – Mother Art Prize Online Award’. Featuring new paintings and works on paper created over the last two years, the exhibition marks the first show in a commercial gallery context for the artist. It launches as part of Richard Saltoun Gallery’s Women 2.0 series, a new programme of online exhibitions presenting work by non-represented artists with the aim of providing an additional platform and visibility for women artists.
The work of Violet Costello is inspired by the complexities of the human condition: our quirks and familiarities, our moments of loneliness and moments of joy, the ways in which we identify and represent ourselves in and to the world. With a practice incorporating painting, sculpture and installation, Costello explores the home, familial relations and society’s ability to shape identity. A common thread in much of her work has been the consideration of children’s world of play, a realm where reality readily gives way to, and is confused with, imagination – as can be seen in her ambitious series Bringing Home Baby.
The paintings in Bringing Home Baby depict the meeting of innocent babyhood with prevailing, if idiosyncratic, culture. In each work, a baby is confronted by the foreign and intensely detailed culture of a family home: Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch on the floor or the 1970s American sitcom Flying Nun on TV; two men happily knitting; a sunburnt dad barbecuing; a bejewelled mom sunbathing; a blue teen in angst; a tattooed mother in a swim cap; and a buttoned-up father in a monkey hat. The walls are hung with art: a Basquiat, a black velvet nude, a Klimt, a bullfighter. The absurd, dreamlike quality of these domestic scenes evokes the strangeness of a baby’s new world and is suggestive of the complex processes by which culture defines and imposes the identity that will shape a baby’s life.
The online presentation is part of the Procreate Project – Mother Art Prize, where Costello was awarded the Online Award for three paintings in her Bringing Home Baby series: Holiday Inn, Peek Freans and Touch Him (all 2018). In addition to these paintings, and several more made specifically for the show, Costello will debut new works on paper, including sketches for works in Bringing Home Baby, such as Wieners, Art in America and Three Cats (all 2020), as well as a loose, auto-biographical self-portrait from her Meseries.
“Among 626 entries from 45 countries, selected by an incredible line up of judges, Violet Costello was the undoubted winner of the Mother Art Prize 2020 Online Award. Violet’s works reimagine figurative art into an engaging new language that combines imagination, play and the grotesque. Costello offers interesting new narratives around the idea of family, care and socio-cultural imprints. As directors of an organisation that promotes and investigates themes surrounding the maternal experience and identity, Violet is definitely an exciting discovery and we look forward to working with her in the future,” said Dyana Gravina, Founder and Creative Director, Procreate Project.
Born in Morpeth, England in 1957, Costello moved to Canada as a child at the age of four. Costello studied at the Alberta College of Art before transferring to the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, where she graduated with an honours diploma in 3-Dimensional Studies and received the J.W. McConnell Memorial Fellowship upon graduation. Costello later earned an MFA in sculpture from Concordia University in Montreal. She has taught at Concordia and the University of Saskatchewan. Costello has been on the rosters of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Partners in Education Society (CAPES) and the City of Calgary Public Art Program. She has received awards from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, British Columbia Culture and Canada Council. Her large-scale sculptural installations have been exhibited throughout Canada in solo and group shows at venues including Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta; Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.; Devonian Art Gallery, Calgary, Alberta; and AKA Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; amongst others.
The 2020 Mother Art Prize judging panel included: Niamh Coghlan, Director, Richard Saltoun Gallery; Pauline de Souza, Director, Diversity Art Forum; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director, The Showroom, London and Lecturer, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University; Eva Langret, Artistic Director, Frieze London; Claire Mander, Chair of Steering Committee of UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Director, theCoLAB; and Frances Morris, Director, Tate Britain. The 2020 edition featured three prize categories: the Winner’s Award, including a £500 Cash Prize and two week solo exhibition at The Showroom in summer 2021; an International Award, including a four week residency at the White House Dagenham (in partnership with Create London) and £500 worth of art materials sponsored by Colart; and an Online Award, including an online exhibition with Richard Saltoun Gallery and two mentoring sessions with Sylvie Gormezano, Director, Picture This Productions and the Chair of the Association of Women Art Dealers (AWAD).
Gallery information
Opening hours:
Please visit the gallery’s website for the latest opening hours
Participating Artists:
Mother Art Prize Exhibition 2020 Cromwell Place
Procreate Project is thrilled to present a group exhibition featuring 19 short-listed artists of the Mother Art Prize 2020, the only international prize for self-identifying women and non-binary visual artists with caring responsibilities.
Established and curated by Procreate Project, this prize’s edition puts together the most exciting leaders and organisations working to tackle the gender bias and intersectional issues in the art scene.
Featuring artists that work across a range of media, the works were selected among 626 entries from 45 countries and judged by Niamh Coghlan (Director, Richard Saltoun Gallery), Pauline Desouza (Director, Diversity Art Forum), Elvira Dyangani Tse (Director, The Showroom), Eva Langret (Artistic Director, Frieze London), Claire Mander (Chair of Steering Committee UK Friends, National Museum of Women in the Arts and Director, the CoLAB) and Frances Morris (Director, Tate Modern).
The winner of this year’s edition, announced in May 2020, is Helen Benigson. She will have an upcoming solo show in partnership with The Showroom as part of her award. Helen is followed by Violet Costello, recipient of the Online Award, with an online Solo Exhibition with Richard Saltoun Gallery, and Eileen Reynolds recipient of the International Award with an upcoming residency with Procreate Project and art material sponsored by Colart.
Their works raise questions around the representation and construction of the body, religious identities, sexualities and gender, as well as reproductive technologies.
“Procreate Project is a vitally important space that supports and champions artists who are carers, (m)others or parents. Procreate Project understands the elastic fragility of what it means to make and show artwork, at the same time as having competing caring responsibilities. At this very surreal and anxious time that we are all living through, spaces like this are extremely rare and extra special, so I am very grateful to Procreate Project and the Mother Art Prize for existing and supporting our work.” – Helen Benigson, Mother Art Prize 2020 Winner
The exhibition is co-curated by Paola Lucente, director at Procreate Project and Claire Mander (Chair of Steering Committee UK Friends, National Museum of Women in the Arts and Director, the CoLAB).
It will take place at and will coincide with the inauguration and opening of Cromwell Place, a new unique arts and culture destination for art collectors and visitors.
When:
5 – 30 Oct 2020
Private Opening: 5-9 Oct
Public opening: 10 – 30 OCT
Opening Hours:
Mon to Wed by appointment only
Thursday-Sat 10am to 6pm
Sunday 12-4pm
* Due to government guidelines visitors will need to register prior their visit to the exhibition. Book below.
Where:
Cromwell Place
4 Cromwell Pl,
London SW7 2JE
