The Artist Mother Studio (AMS)

Artist Mother Studio (AMS) sought to shift the conversation around motherhood to broaden its definition beyond that of a universalist white paternalism to an understanding of it as the conditioning of a world to come.

For nine weeks, WPA functioned as an artist residency with childcare. AMS concluded with a mini-conference and a zine on November 3, 2018. The project was organized by DC artist Amy Hughes Braden, with the participation of three artists— Leah Lewis, Katherine Mann, and Anne Smith—and their four children, who ranged in age from several months to 3 years. Braden hoped AMS elevated the voices of artist mothers/caregivers and to continue important conversations about communal labor and how mothers can leverage their experiences for positive social change. But most of all, AMS foregrounded the dependency and entanglement of being a caregiver (a loss, in a traditional sense, of personal freedom) as a generative position from which to create art.