Abstract:
This session examines how motherhood and reproductive labor have been articulated, materialized, and contested within modern and contemporary art, design, and exhibition practices. Historically relegated to the private sphere, the labor of reproduction and care has increasingly entered public, institutional, and artistic spaces, disrupting entrenched divisions between domestic and political life. Framed through the SECAC 2026 theme Interwoven: Threads, Patterns & Disruptions, the session considers motherhood as an interlaced system of bodily labor, material culture, and social design that both sustains and challenges dominant cultural structures.
Papers may address how artists, curators, and designers render visible the often-invisible work of caregiving, childbirth, and maintenance through performance, sculpture, installation, moving image, and exhibition-making. We are particularly interested in feminist and transnational perspectives that foreground reproductive autonomy, institutional critique, and the aesthetics of care. By attending to objects, practices, and spaces that mediate human reproduction—from domestic artifacts to museum displays—this session explores how art and design function as sites where social imaginaries are formed, contested, and reconfigured.
We welcome art historical papers and practice-based perspectives that critically engage motherhood, care, and reproductive labor across historical and contemporary contexts.
Submission Details:
Deadline: April 1, 2026
Submissions should be made through the SECAC conference portal:
https://secac.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/login/30
Conference information: https://secacart.org/page/WinstonSalem2026
