My project started with my interest and passion for feminism before entering the master’s program. In the first year, my focus was oriented towards European gender discrimination policies. I produced artistic responses that considered how these policies influence my identity as an artist and how feminism is actively practiced. The second year, based on the contextualization done in the first, I explored how artists, particularly those labeled as the ‘other,’ such as mothers, could expand their roles. This led me to construct a deep investigation into the embodied multiplicities of mothering and motherhood, sparked by my own experiences as a mother.
You, reader, are alive today because someone, once, mothered you.
Through the research done, I am unveiling the multiplicities of mothering through embodiment by arguing that conventional binary constraints, rooted in traditional gender roles and contemporary societal expectations, restrict our understanding of maternal experiences and identities, of motherhood and mothering. These constraints impose narrow, rigid expectations on individuals, particularly women, defining their roles and behaviors based on these traditional norms.
Autotheory emerges as a powerful canvas for this unveiling, as it provides the means for a critical scrutiny of these constraints. It acts as an artistic stage for questioning and surpassing these limitations, ultimately seeking to illuminate the irrationality of societal expectations surrounding motherhood and mothering
Academic Research
The research was digitally and publicly published in GUPEA.