The Time Has Come for Artist-Mothers. Ashley January feature in Hyperallergic

At last, artist-mothers are having a moment. For centuries women have struggled to balance the competing demands of art-making and childrearing — and many have been excluded from the art world as a result. Only in recent years has talk of artist-motherhood and its challenges entered the mainstream, with a spate of books and films and essays, along with new residencies and networks, continuing to push the conversation further. The consensus: Women with children need institutional support — from galleries, from the government — in order to thrive as artists.

By now, the plight of artist-mothers has been — pardon the pun — belabored to the extent that I wondered, on entering Fruits of Labor: Reframing Motherhood and Artmaking at Apexart, what was left to say on the subject. As it turns out, plenty. 

Fruits of Labor, curated by Bruna Shapira, features eight artist-mothers whose work, directly and indirectly, is shaped by motherhood. Some take the frustrations and rewards of mothering as their subjects. In Anna Maria Maiolino’s mesmerizing 1995 poem “You+Me,” one of four on display, the Brazilian artist anxiously probes the schism between her body, busied by the manual labor of childcare, and her mind, starved for intellectual stimulation. Meanwhile, Ashley January’s painting “She was given agency in the process and survived” (2021) depicts a tender moment of repose between a Black mother and son. Standing beside a lilypad-filled pond, the boy is awed by the natural world, his mother awed by him.

Fruits of Labor: Reframing Motherhood and Artmaking continues at Apexart (291 Church Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through December 23. The exhibition was curated by Bruna Shapira.