Diane Simpson in Mommy at Yale Union

Oct. 10, 2015

PORTLAND – A group show that considers the mother, with work by Lutz Bacher, Susan Cianciolo, Sonya Hamilton, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eliot Porter, Aura Rosenberg, Diane Simpson, Barbara T. Smith, Frances Stark, and Rosemarie Trockel. It will also include new site-specific works by Cathy Wilkes and Anicka Yi, and a performance by Karin Schneider.

This exhibition assents to the mystery and chaos of motherhood. It is made with ambivalence toward coherent ideas of maternity. It is made in reaction to the circumference of saccharine sentimentality and repressive rage that persists in culturally mediated visions of the mother, a circumference that tightens like a noose around the necks of actual women. This show laments the culturally constructed binary of “family vs. career,” while acknowledging the persistence of that obstacle in the lives of artists. I believe there are more irreducible things at stake. This show is all of the places in between, the making-do, the quotidian, the disobedient, the law-abiding, the carnal, the repulsive, the both-and. I made this show with a desire to capture what is true—and not what resembles the truth—in my experience as a mother.

Curated by Hope Svenson with Robert Snowden. Thank you to Moyra Davey, Bridget Donahue, Carol Greene, Anthony Huberman, Nova Ionis, Jacqueline Tarquinio Kennedy, Andrew Kreps, Isla Leaver-Yap, Friederike Schuler, and Jasmin Tsou. Additional thanks to KBOO Community Radio and XRAY FM.

October 10–December 20, 2015
Thursday–Sunday, 3–6pm

OPENING
Saturday, October 10, 4–6pm

More information on Yale Union available here.