Karolina Lavergne is a video artist and writer based in Los Angeles. She has an MFA in Graduate Fine Art from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Karolina’s work explores the domestic as a sphere that is both a refuge and a trap, and in which desire is inseparable from struggle. She also uses gender as a lens through which to think through the hidden, reproductive labor of caring for oneself and others, house work, and the maternal. As a way of working, she sources her life as material, blurring the line between fiction and autobiography, construction, persona, exaggeration, truth, and lie.
Since 2010 my art has been about processing my experience of giving birth to and raising children—both the emotional aspect of it and the social context in which my stories are situated. To create a space of shared reflection, I created a collective called Institute of Mothering Artists, IOMA. Here is an excerpt from the manifesto of IOMA: “We are writing a new definition of the word “mother” where the work of caring does not assume a body of a woman, hence we want to use “mother” as an action verb. To mother means to care for or to protect someone or something.” (an excerpt from the manifesto for Institute of Mothering Artists, 2018) My thoughts on “mothering” were inspired by the stance of women who were mothering in the margins. In a book “Revolutionary Mothering,” a collection of writings by radical and queer black feminists, the editors Alexis Pauline Gumbs and China Martens, define mothering as an act of caring, nurturing, affirming, and supporting life. For me, mothering is doing the reproductive labor with love and using this very act of caring for others to fight the injustice. It is transforming the society while being transformed by the act of caring. In my personal art making, I try to capture this metamorphosing process that takes place when we take care of one another. The spaces I create through drawing, printmaking and installation become a metaphoric place where the visual elements and logic recreate the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.
The Mothership Project is a network of parenting artists in Ireland. The Mothership Project aims to support parenting artists in the development of their practice and to encourage arts organisations to make the art world a more inclusive place for artists with children. The Mothership Project wants to see societal and institutional change for parents in the art world. Being a parent can be challenging at the best of times, but with precarious circumstances and incomes, and uncertain futures parenting artists can be doubly challenged within a society that is lacking many supports for those with children.
The Mothership Project is currently managed collectively by four artists :
Leah Hillard, Michelle Browne, Seoidín O’Sullivan and Tara Kennedy. They organise and administer the workings of the network. There are many artist parents who have
contributed to this project and The Mothership exists through the collective effort and generosity of the many creative minds and caring bodies that have willed it into being.
MATERNAL FANTASIES is an evolving and interdisciplinary group of international artists and cultural producers based in Berlin, Germany. We (re)connected in 2018 to share experiences and insights into the most marginalised topic within both the art world and feminist discourse: Motherhood.
We join forces to embrace, discuss, elaborate and express contrasting experiences and family stories, memories, fantasies, desires and horror scenarios related to ‘Maternal Fantasies’.
Currently we meet every three-weeks to examine through artistic research, collaborative artworks and lived experience the dynamics between artistic creation and motherhood seeking to shape the discourse of motherhood through our artistic working process.
We are an organic group that produces works in different constellations between the individual group members.
Current group members are: Aino El Solh, Hanne Klaas, Isabell Spengler, Lena Chen, Magdalena Kallenberger, Maicyra Leão, Melanie Schlachter, Mikala Hyldig Dal, Olga Sonja Thorarensen, Sandra Moskova.
M1, Arthur Boskamp Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt, April 2019 The photo-text installation "Like so many..." was exhibited at "Colleagues Wanted I - Superheroines and visionary associates for everyday challenges", at alpha nova galerie Berlin in September 2018.
upcoming: Soloexhibition, M1 Arthur Boskamp Foundation, Hohenlockstedt, March 2020 catalogue, Maternal Fantasies, to be published March 2020