Artist And Mother: An Illuminating New Documentary
Written by Katie Hintz-Zambrano
Photography by Video via KCET
Over the last few years, the topic of art and motherhood successfully coexisting has been a hot topic (we encourage you to read “The Neurological Link Between Motherhood and Creativity” and “Is Domestic Life the Enemy of Creative Work?” to catch up on the debate).
Most recently, the hot-button issue gets aired out in an in-depth manner in KCET’s Artbound series, with a 1-hour episode, Artist and Mother, produced by Jori Finkel, an arts writer at The New York Times. The thoughtful film looks into the lives of four California-based artists—Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Andrea Chung, Rebecca Campbell, and Tanya Aguiñiga—and showcases the discrimination many working artists who are mothers face and the double-standard posed to male artists who are fathers.
To accompany the short film (which you can watch in its entirety above), there are also a trio of eye-opening articles: “Burdens Women-Artists Bear In The Art World,” “Artist-Mothers: Where To Find Them and Who Supports Them,” and “Do Women Dealers Represent More Women Artists?” All in all, it’s clear something has got to change.
“In some ways it’s shocking that motherhood hasn’t made it into these major exhibitions or into art history textbooks in a more explicit way,” says Finkel in the film. “If we leave motherhood out of art history, we’re leaving a huge chunk of the human experience out of it as well.”
Gallery Tally founder Micol Hebron also hits the nail on the head, when she questions: “Why don’t we assume that when a person becomes a parent, that their levels of human experience become so much more complex and expanded that their work should be valued more, not less? That gallerists and curators and collectors should be even more excited about what’s going to happen with their work as a result of being a parent and being engaged in that type of relationship with another human being?”
Amen to all of that.
For more information and inspiration, be sure to watch the film above, and check out our Mother profiles on artist mothers Rachel Kaye, Lauren Noel, Serena Mitnik-Miller, Amy Hirst, A-Lan Holt, Jen Garrido, Alex Elle, Francesca DiMattio, Elise Peterson, Chloe Fleury, Emily Leonard Southard, Joy Sunyoung, Erin Gleeson, Sarah Perez, and Fanny Gentle.
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