Mothers on the Fringe: MARCC Pop-Up Exhibition

Once again, Manitoba Artist Run Centres Coalition is hosting a pop-up exhibition at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival on Albert Street, July 16-27. For two days, MAWA will be featuring Mothers on the Fringe a showcase by the Artist Mothers at MAWA Mothers on the Fringe July 25 & 26 Noon-8pm The Artist Mothers Group at MAWA creates artwork that responds to the tensions between the challenges and joys of mothering and the maintenance of a viable art practice. To date we have held numerous exhibitions centered on themes relating to our dual practice. In this exhibition, Mothers on the Fringe, we share our interpretations of what it means to mother and make art on-the-fringe. This term suggests being situated on the edge, the outside, holding a contrariness to social norms. In a patriarchal society, feminine aspects of nurturing and caring, which constitute the characteristics of mother, are often over looked and under valued. Mother’s work is too often invisible and taken for granted and as such, mothering is a position that exists on the fringe. Finding time to make art amongst a plethora of family commitments, work and domestic chores is often a near impossibility. Not only are we Mothering on the Fringe, but the fulfillment of our artist selves, another undervalued and sometimes misunderstood practice, situates us on the fringe of the fringe; meta-fringe! This body of work is evidence of our varied but connected experiences as artist/mothers in relation to the dedication we have to our dual practices of caring and loving our children and nurturing ourselves through artistic examinations of our lived experiences on the fringe.