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Field Notes from Maternal Territory: an Exhibition about Mothering

In this multi-media installation, artists Margaret Naylor and jil p. weaving explore the experience of mothers within North American culture, an identity constructed by mass media, popular language, history and personal experience. The exhibition includes sculpture, photography, painting and a web site. Naylor and weaving present complex issues with humour and insight.

Through a series of comic strip style paintings and a web site produced by a fictional ?Department of Maternal Affairs?, jil p. weaving imagines ?a story which has already begun and not yet ended. This is a social fiction of a future in which many of the current expectations mothers face still exist.? The artist explores the potential impact of recent developments in science, medicine and technology on the activity of mothering.

Margaret Naylor?s sculptural installation uses the formal qualities of architecture, furniture and domestic objects as metaphors which address motherhood as a cultural construct. Naylor?s work reflects the voice of the mother who speaks as a teacher, a nurturer and a protector. Naylor says, ?The voice is one of desire, wisdom and authority as well as one of apprehension and doubt.?