Re/production: Motherhood and Artistic Practice extd.

How is our understanding of artistic practice challenged, when motherhood is no longer positioned as art’s outside? Following this question, the event brings filmmaker Katharina Pethke and art historian Jordan Troller together for a joint screening and discussion on the relationship between maternal experience and artistic work.

In the essayistic documentary Reproduktion, Katharina Pethke examines the architectural spaces of Hamburgs Academy of Arts in relation to her own family history. Tracing three generations of women who passed through this institution, the film reflects on how tensions between artistic subjectivity and maternity have shifted or persisted across time.

In her recent book Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury, Jordan Troeller situates the sculptor within her community of Bay Area women artists. Troeller shows, how Asawa’s use of non-toxic materials, raising six children, and her engagements in community arts education shaped her artistic practice, while fundamentally challenging modernism’s myth of the autonomous artist.

Following the screening, Katharina Pethke and Jordan Troeller will discuss the entanglements of reproductive and artistic labor, and how family archives can bring forward histories that often remain unwritten. Books available for purchase.

The event is hosted in the frame of  “The M/Other Project: Creativity, Procreation, and Contemporary Art“ and organized by Clara Borchmann, Louisa Haake and Antonia Rohwetter. The project is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation through a Freigeist Fellowship. Moderation: Antonia Rohwetter