In the field of art, the care work practiced by artists/mothers resonates as peripheral discourse. Maternal Fantasies are formed by seven female artists and ten children from different cultural contexts and artistic disciplines. Through immersive artistic residencies, the collective acts as an experimental environment where the collective artistic production is facilitated by a set of self-imposed rules. These rules include mixed procedures from activist movements, artistic tools, automatic (autobiographical) writing, and kids’ games in order to generate poetical fictions that critically address the representation of motherhood, maternal isolation, and social exclusion. The artistic practice of the collective opens an ironic polyvocality that interrupts the flow of social reproduction, highlighting the tension between private and public, historical and contemporary struggles.
Produced during the collective’s Landpartie 01 residency in 2018 at betOnest, Angermünde.