Transmitting Tresses & Technologies of Motherhood
Transmitting Tresses
Inspired by the work of collaborator Cienna Davis, this piece explores how Black women’s hair practices build networks and communicate in a shared language of care.
Technologies of Motherhood
tech·nol·o·gy (/tekˈnäləjē/): the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular are or a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge
This piece considers the technical processes, methods, and knowledges applied in motherhood. Though they are often overlooked or ignored as non-scientific, the quotidian tools and techniques used by mothers throughout various geographies and cultures are some of the most life-sustaining technologies humans have developed.
Both of these collages were featured in the Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity exhibition, which I both contributed to and co-curated. This was a contemporary art exhibition envisioning feminist solidarities across space and time, in everyday life, with an outlook towards “the future we want to see, right now, in the present.” Selected artworks interpreted the quotidian practices of the everyday as a means of consistently cultivating radical feminist knowledges, sustaining networks of care, and articulating communal resistance, within and beyond territorial borders, in often unspectacular and unglamorous ways.
The exhibition's curatorial team was Cienna Davis, Lucila Rozas Urrunaga, Simron Gill, Valentina Proust, and Azsaneé Truss.
September 12, 2024 - November 19, 2024 (Annenberg School, UPenn - Philadelphia)
Learn more about the exhibition here, and more about the symposium here.