In their curatorial essay for The Let Down Reflex, Amber Berson and Juliana Driever explain: “The Mothernists (2017) combines Lise Haller Baggesen and Deirdre M. Donoghue’s separate projects concerning maternal (aest)ethics into an installation that includes books and flags from Haller Baggesen’s nomadic Mothernism camp, video documentation of lectures presented at The Mothernists I, and their manifesta, UMAMI 2.0. Together, the project references their co-organized conference of the same name, which ‘attempts to open up philosophical, political, aesthetic and social questions made visible through the co-existing practices of mothering and cultural re-production, bringing these into the diverse discourses that the participants professionally as artists, writers, philosophers, curators, historians and educators are part of.’” Lise Haller Baggesen and Deirdre M. Donoghue, “The Mothernists,” M/Other Voices. July 19, 2017: https://www.mothervoices.org/the-mothernists/

By initiating a dialogue around maternal experiences and forms of knowledge, and challenging the conditions of access and presence in cultural institutions, this project urges us to reflect on the asymmetrical production and dissemination of knowledge concerning art and the maternal in the cultural realm and beyond.