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Curated by Talia Traskos-Hart ’25, with support from BCMA curator Cassandra Mesick Braun, From Daughters to Mothers: A Study of Reproductive Labor opens December 19, 2024 at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College Museum of Art. The exhibition investigates complex concepts of motherhood through the lens of reproductive labor and the unpaid work associated with caregiving, the maintenance of a household, and child-rearing. The following conversation offers a glimpse into the development of the exhibition. The transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Amanda Skinner (AS): Talia, can you please tell us about the original inspiration for From Daughters to Mothers: A Study of Reproductive Labor? What drew you to this particular topic of domestic labor?

Talia Traskos-Hart (TTH): The topic for the exhibition grew out of my honors project. I’m a history major and English minor and I’ve long been interested in the intersection between labor history and women’s history. Last year I took a number of courses that offered more insight as to how those two histories are intertwined. Those classes included “Communism” with Professor Salar Mohandesi and “Victorian Realism” with Professor Aviva Briefel. In those classes I began researching how women have organized around their position in the home, which then grew into my honors project.

For my honors project I’ve been researching a small subset of groups from 1960s and 1970s who were both Marxist and Feminist. As a result, ideas of domesticity and reproductive labor have been on my mind. Organizing this exhibition has been a way to think about reproduction as a form of labor that is unpaid and unrecognized, and that varies greatly in different times and places. However, reproduction is also a labor defined by love and affection.

Cassandra Braun (CB): When Talia submitted an application with her initial ideas for an exhibition, I was struck by the richness of the topic and how well our collections could help her explore some of these themes. As the exhibition will demonstrate, there are a number of objects in the Museum’s Permanent Collection that lend themselves particularly well to her research.

AS: Talia, are there particular objects included in the exhibition that particularly resonate with you? Why?

TTH: The artworks included in the exhibition are either photographs that have a semi-documentary function, portraits of mothers with children, or mothers as artists creating portraits with their own children, which is sort of documentary in its own way. The by Donna Ferrato includes photographs of victims of domestic violence that were taken somewhat candidly. Elinor Carucci staged her photograph but it is a self-portrait that represents her daily commute with her two children. All of the images in Carucci’s series are about her relationship with her children and their daily life.

Margaurite Zorach’s painting is a depiction of her family sitting around a table. Though it is of course not a photograph, it does capture the spirit of documentary photography in its portrayal of a particular moment in Zorach’s daily life. When her children were young, she veered away from oil painting because of the labor intensity of the medium and instead shifted to embroidery and textiles. She then returned to oil painting once her children were older and more self-sufficient. This dynamic speaks to this idea of being an artist and a mother, how those two identities overlap, and the tension between love and work. As these examples illustrate, it is easy to see the complexities of motherhood.

CB: A few subthemes emerged as we looked at potential objects from the Permanent Collection and worked on the checklist together. One of those themes is investigating and exploring the challenges and opportunities of artists as mothers. We were thinking not just about labor in terms of an artist’s job, but also how motherhood influences an artist’s creativity and sense of self. Artists like Zorach and Carucci are grappling with their identities as mothers and demonstrating that it’s not an “either or” between their creative practice and familial responsibilities. Because of motherhood, their practices evolved in some ways, and both Carucci and Zorach have explained how they felt compelled to integrate their identity as mothers into their work.

The photograph by Larry Clark raises many pertinent questions about society today and women’s responsibilities to their children while they are pregnant, as well as issues of personhood, legality, and ethics within an American and European framework. It is a difficult and sensitive image but it is being framed in this exhibition with such care and thought.

AS: What are the key themes or ideas you hope audiences will take away from the exhibition?

TTH: The works represent a wide range of political, global, and temporal contexts, and address themes like motherhood during wartime, the commodification of motherly bodies, and the question of what it means to be a “good” mother. Underlying the main theme of the exhibition is the idea that domestic labor is a pervasive form of unpaid labor and that it represents a vastly unexplored terrain of exploitation. Whether a woman works outside of the home or not, she is likely performing some sort of reproductive or domestic labor—I’d like for viewers to question the ways in which we so often neglect reproductive labor and to understand that conceptions of labor are not irreconcilable with the love and care that motherhood requires. In other words, both labor and love are present in this dynamic.

CB: The exhibition also addresses the varied ways in which people might relate to the works based on their own lived experience. For example, the exhibition raises questions of how someone who is a mother might relate to the material differently than someone who does not have children. The exhibition will also discuss ideas around gender and subjectivity in regard to either the artist producing the work or the people being represented by the work. For example, some of the artworks were made by men who are photographing women, mothers, and children, which in turn raises questions about the positionality of artist.

It is these types of subtle questions that are being raised without trying to prescribe a specific answer.  It is also important to note that Talia is not creating an exhibition solely for mothers but rather is developing the exhibition knowing that people will be engaging with the art through a wide variety of lived experiences.

TTH: It’s been great to zoom out and look at different depictions of motherhood, and especially interesting to explore the research of scholars who work on this material through the lens of art and visual culture. I’ve enjoyed approaching this research topic through these objects from the BCMA’s Permanent Collection and seeing how this research is so widely applicable. 

CB: What a privilege it is for the Museum to be able to support students such as Talia in their research and to offer experiences that will be useful to them in their career paths. My experience in working with students and faculty is that I learn so much from them as well. These exhibitions support the fantastic work being done across campus.

From Mothers to Daughters: A Study of Reproductive Labor will be on view at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College Museum of Art from December 19, 2024 through March 2, 2025.