Maternal Aesthetics: The Surprise of the Real
Guest Curator: Andrea Liss, California State University, San Marcos
Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real is a special issue of Studies in the Maternal, aiming to bring together a vibrant intermingling of work by visual artists, scholars of visual culture and feminist theory, poets, writers, activists and more, who are engaged in thinking about new conceptualizations of the maternal.
As guest curator of this special themed issue, I would like to bring forth the unexpected juxtapositions of images and texts that set maternal identities, subjectivities and inter-subjectivities in motion, where the previously displaced and devalued maternal is voiced from a mother’s perspective and configured anew. Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will therefore aim to elicit moments ranging from subtle awareness to the surprise of the real when feminist artists and writers became cognizent of themselves as mothers, when sense of self and sense of self with child(ren) brings about new subjectivities and inter-subjectivities.
The issue will include contributions that articulate such transformations: what sorts of ruptures, continuities, resistances, discomforts or other responses are experienced in domestic spaces, public workplaces and other cultural spheres by mothers and articulated as mothers (biological or otherwise). Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will create a forum to represent how feminist artists and writers understand, embrace, resist, live and perform the act of mothering in and throughout their lives. Reflections and analyses addressing such experiences of transformation between the mother and her adult child(ren), as well as intergenerational perspectives are also welcome.