LONDON ENGLAND – I attended the Procreate Project’s Oxytocin Conference, organized by Dyana Gravina, and team, mid-May for two days of intensely powerful commissioned art, scholarship, and workshop work at Kings College. Scholar, poet, and accelerator Hannah Brockbank and I were scheduled to lead a workshop together.

Inspired by the work of Sierra Clark, the workshop was titled “Repair Work, from Sweet Nothings to Sweet Everything,” the title of her chapter in Repairing the Black Family Anthology, edited by Sister Nayyirah Muhammad. The aim of the workshop was to disrupt narratives in order to facilitate healing, which was indeed the goal of the entire conference.

The power of stories shared and the work we did together to dialogue about contemporary issues facing mothers and the women who labor through this important work could not be denied. Laura Godfrey Issacs shared information about the Birth Cafe (see more at http://www.birth are.org), PhD candidate Anna Horn’s interactive workshop on ‘Inclusive Infant Feeding’ compelled.

The conference itself was funded by the Public Arts Council of England amount others. The Procreate Project, Museum of Motherhood, and MER: The Mom Egg Review have been working together since 2015 to feature the art and literature of m/others. I am looking forward to bringing new knowledge(s) back to Florida when I return. But first, the second portion of my trip takes me on a three hour flight to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea.

XEMXIJA, MALTA with its windswept bay, Mellieha with views that stretch past the isle of Goza, Mostar, with its magnificent dome, Mdina the silent city, and Rabat. Hot, dusty, and international. Roses, cactus, olive trees and lemons. In Malta, we go to see the Goddess temples Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. These two temples comprise one of the three UNESCO Heritage sites on Malta, but together there are seven megalithic temples. So, of the three sites heritage sites, one represents all of the temples combined, plus the city of Valletta, and the Hypogeum. Additionally, located at the island of Gozo are the temples rumored to built by the giants.

These Megalithic temples comprise some of the oldest free-standing structures on earth. Older than the pyramids, they are thought to be Goddess Temples for both fertility and transformation as part of a prehistoric culture that appears to be centered around women and the three spheres, heaven, earth, and the underworld as embodied through the pot, house, temple and tomb. We catch the bus and hold tight swerving up narrow inclines twisting and turning above the sea.

When we get to the temple, I am quivering with excitement. We buy tickets, walk through the small but impactful museum, and head outdoors along a windswept path towards the structure which overlooks the Mediterranean. The breeze is slight. Hagar Qim is crowned with a giant white canvas to lessen the impact of the elements. As one approaches her entrance, the tent fades away and all focus turns to the massive rocks shaping what appears to be her portal beyond the giant curved walls. According to Cultural Anthropologist Veronica Veen, we enter the Goddess’ body through her vagina (Pg. 8 The Goddess of Malta).

There is so much to write about here. Both portions of my trip have offered so much in terms of knowledge, blessings, friendship, and collaboration. I’ll bring all this newfound knowledge of Goddesses and the art of many m/others back to the Museum of Motherhood with me. It will certainly inform my work moving forward and I look forward to the future conversations, creativity, and future collaborations this will inspire.

Yours in Love, Light, and M/otherhood. I hope my American friends have a great Memorial Day Weekend – Martha Joy Rose

More about my personal perspectives can be found at my blog: MarthaJoyRose.com

EVENT INFORMATION
Royal College of Art, London – 3rd June 2017Oxytocin is a one-day symposium and programme of performances about mothers, mother art, maternal health & wellbeing.Supported by LADA and under the umbrella of theProCreate Project, the event is curated together with Dyana Gravina form the Procreate Project, Martha Joy Rose from the Museum of Motherhood (USA), Laura Godfrey-Isaacs, artist, midwife and founder of Home Live Art, Sara Paiola, researcher in Law and Human Rights from the School of Law, Birkbeck University and Sarah Dufayard, artist and producer.Oxytocin is an international research and community event focused on mothers and carers. The panels will analyse current critical practices pushing for new strategies aimed at increasing the visibility and representation of women and mothers in society.The symposium will highlight new ideas whereby infrastructures and creative programs can support and facilitate healthy families thus challenging attitudes towards motherhood, female sexuality, birth, depression and human rights. Oxytocin will encourage conversation and exchange between medical, academic and art sectors with the aim to facilitate collaborations between them and increase awareness on women’s rights, mental, emotional and physical needs during pregnancy, labour and postnatal adaptation.The event opens a community discussion aimed at spotlighting the connection between much-needed support for mothers and new approaches that are designed to encourage mothers’ and childrens’ optimum health, professional and artistic development, ongoing education, and continuing connection.The event will consist of panel discussions lead by three sectors (Artists & Academy, Midwifery, Mental Health and human rights) fused with a day programme of performances, installations and live art.
Contact:
Email info@procreateproject.com
Website: https://www.oxytocinbirthingtheworld.co.uk

Tickets page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxytocin-birthing-the-world-tickets-34242153202

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1152322241581305/

Special Panel: Saturday, June 3rd 10:30AM Royal College of Art

Making Mother Studies Matter: Academics Advocate Fiercely for Art, Maternal Health, and a Lasting Legacy

The self-identified Mother Movement started roughly 20 years ago. In its early years, American bands began singing about motherhood while Canadian scholars began writing about it. The year was 1997. Roughly eight years before that, a few scholars published books examining the subject of motherhood. Sarah Ruddick wrote Maternal Thinking. Barbara Katz Rothman wrote Recreating Motherhood, and these Western works were preceded by Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born. The texts examined a society based on patriarchal constructions that constrained and oppressed women who were mothers, as well as their offspring.

It has been said that in order to change the future we must understand the past. Likewise, by studying the rising wave of mother-identity-art-making and scholarly texts, this panel aims to explore the legitimacy of mother studies, advocate for it to be levied within academic institutions, and share some of the ways current academics and artists are championing this legacy for future generations.

Martha Joy Rose: Martha Joy Rose is a musician, concert promoter, museum founder, and fine artist. Her work has been published across blogs and academic journals and she has performed with her band Housewives On Prozac on Good Morning America, CNN, and the Oakland Art & Soul Festival to name a few. She is the NOW-NYC recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award, her Mamapalooza Festival Series has been recognized as “Best in Girl-Power Events” in New York, and her music has appeared on the Billboard Top 100 Dance Charts. She founded the Museum of Motherhood in 2003, created the Motherhood Foundation 501c3 non-profit in 2005, saw it flourish in NYC from 2011-2014, and then pop up at several academic institutions. In 2015, she received a Masters in Mother Studies from CUNY, The Graduate Center of New York. This is believed to be the first individualized MALS Degree in this specialty. She then taught Sociology of Family at Manhattan College before moving to her current live/work space in Kenwood St. Petersburg, Florida, which is devoted to the exploration of mother-labor as performance art. She is a contributing author the The Encyclopedia of Motherhood (Sage Press, 2011), The Twentieth Century Motherhood Movement (Demeter Press, 2011), New Maternalisms (Demeter Press, 2015), and the forthcoming book, Music of Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2017).

Sarah Black -In 2016 a presentation by Sarah Black called “Mother As Curator” at the Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference described her home environment as a video, art, installation, and inter-generational family experience. Her treatise declared that as an artist, she “blurs the boundaries of art, and the personal, family and audience, narrative and auto-biographic practices.” She states that as a “performance maker, she explores the home as both a physical and a metaphysical structure to house the work.” In this way, spaces are informed and co-created by those who participate in its interiors, but similarly, its interiors also hold a template for studying the things it contains from a distance.

Paula Chambers – Paula Chambers has exhibited widely, with a back catalogue of solo shows including most recently “Transcendental Housework” at Stockport Art Gallery, and “Domestic Pirate” at Show Space, London. Paula studied under Griselda Pollock at the University of Leeds for the MA Feminist History, Theory, Criticism and Practice in the Visual Arts. Paula is Principal Lecturer (Sculpture) on BA Fine Art, at Leeds College of Art. She is undertaking a practice‐led PhD at Middlesex University.

Rosiland Howell – Rosalind Howell is a Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist with the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK (ADMPUK) with a particular interest in Maternal Subjectivity and Perinatal Mental Health. Her recent publications include: Writing Maternal Ambivalence (and how we love to hate it). MaMSIE.org/blog 2016 A Chorus, a Gaggle, or a Consternation of Mothers. Mommuseum.org 2015 The Loneliness of Parenting Decisions. Juno Parenting Magazine 2014, Love and Hate in Childbirth. MaMSIE.org/blog 2015.

Roberta Garrett – Roberta Garrett is a senior lecturer in the School of Arts and Digital Industries at the University of East London. She has published widely on gender representation in film and literature. She is the author of Postmodern Chick-Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film (Palgrave, 2007). Other publications include ‘Female Fantasy and Post-Feminist Politics in Nora Ephron’s Screenplays’ Journal of Screenwriting, 2011, and the forthcoming ‘Gendering the Post 9/11 Movie: Love, Loss and Regeneration in Julie and Julia’, in Mary Harrod (ed.) Women and Genre (University of Illinois Press, 2016). She is currently working on popular representations of the neo-liberal family in literature and film, and has published: ‘Novels and Children: “Mum’s Lit” and the Public Mother/Author’, Journal of Maternal Studies, 2013; and ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin: The Monstrous Child as Feminist and Anti-American Allegory’, in Peter Childs, Sebastian Groes and Claire Colbrook (eds.) Women’s Writing Post 9/11 (Lexington Press, 2014). Her essay, ‘ Cavorting in the Ruins? Truth, Myth and Resistance in Contemporary Mumoirs’, appears in Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen and Angela Voela (eds.) We Need to Talk about Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, The Family and Popular Culture (Cambridge Scholars, forthcoming 2016). She is also writing a monograph entitled Writing the Modern Family: Neoliberalism and Representation of Parenting in Contemporary Novels and Memoirs.