By Ruchika Wason Singh (artist, New Delhi) and Jess Moriarty (UoB)
In the autumn of 2021, the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing funded a symposium led by myself (Jess) and Kate Aughterson, called, Performing Maternities, an event that had been in the works for over year before the global pandemic meant that it was moved online. COVID-19 and lockdowns had been emotional and often traumatic for many, and at that point, many of us still hadn’t been able to process experiences of grief, illness, the shift to working from home, homeschooling – the majority of which often fell to mothers (Care Quality Commission 2021; McKinsey 2021; Cousins 2020; McGee et al 2022) – and the absence of being with loved ones in social and face-to-face contexts. The conference was a magical space where we laughed and cried over collective and individual experiences, and also the work on maternity – critical and creative – that the people taking part had produced. Creative practice informed by getting pregnant, not getting pregnant, having a baby, not having a baby, and the real and imagined stories that these times inspired meant that the event was rich and full, surprising and relatable.
When we spoke of maternal, we included, as stated in the introduction of a post-conference book for Intellect Books, “Our world of birth mothers, egg-mothers, adoptive mothers, lesbian mothers, queer mothers, trans mothers, foster mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers,
mothers without children, mothers with students, othermothers has been transformed by a combination of technology and social change – we have extended the term maternal to mean so much more than a bearing and nurturing body – and a good thing too.” (Aughterson and Moriarty, 2024, p.3). Part of the discussions at the event were focused on the challenges associated with maternity and particularly for people from marginalised and underserved communities. A key question arising from the event was: How can creative methods develop understanding and decolonise maternity?
Ruchika Wason Singh (artist and academic, India) was one of the presenters at the conference, speaking about the artwork she had devised by drawing on maternity and nature: “Wason Singh’s work resonates internationally and locally and allows the viewer/reader to contemplate simultaneously the familiarity and the otherness of ours and others’ bodies in the world.” (Ibid, p.12). Kate and I were delighted that Ruchika wanted to publish a chapter in the post-conference book and also that she tried to maintain momentum with what happened at the event. In post-conference chats, via email and on Instagram, Ruchika and I came to develop the Decolonising Maternities project as a way of bringing the work of artists in India into the University of Brighton, extending the network of artists and academics that the event had started, and giving us time to think about how this work might motivate conversations and engender social change around maternity across the world.
The Centre for Arts and Wellbeing funded a small-scale transdisciplinary project led by Ruchika and I that aimed to engage mothers, artists, researchers in India, in a series of dialogues about lived experiences with the potential to challenge negative and reductive discourse about motherhood and celebrate and value diverse stories of maternity. Asian women are twice as likely to die in childbirth than white women and Black women are four times as likely (Williams, 2022) and yet there is a paucity of knowledge and understanding about the lived experiences of maternity from members of the global majority in the UK. How the arts can raise awareness about experiences of maternity was another key question Ruchika and I wanted to explore and we commissioned 2 artists in India and 1 to devise work that responded to the dialogues that are shared here as part of our dissemination.
Vasudha Thozhur studied at the College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, and at the School of Art and Design in Croydon, UK. Her practice is interdisciplinary but primarily rooted in painting. A recent compilation entitled, Diaries, Projects, Pedagogy 1998–2018, is the first of a series entitled Art Documents and was published by Tulika Books in association with the Sundaram Sher Gil Foundation. She is a Professor in the Department of Art and Performing Arts at Shiv Nadar University.
Tanujaa Rane Hambardikar is a printmaker- born in 1976 Maharashtra. She has participated in several group exhibitions in India and overseas along with participations in several international print Biennials and works. She lives and works in Mumbai.
Tanujaa Rane Hambardikar, Twenty two stitches, (tryptch), 10”x 12” each, Etching, 2006
The project wanted to promote research and knowledge exchange and use creative methods to respond to the real-world global challenges facing people navigating maternity. There was a shared intention to produce work that was sustainable and in the spirit of social change – in the UK but also in India. The project developed the Centre’s international links, and we hope to grow these connections by drawing new voices – artists and researchers – into the next phase of our work.
This seed-funded project is concerned with sharing stories of maternity including the experience of birthing; and parenting; the continued identity we might have after we have finished, or when wish we might, parent; the metaphors we associate with cultural and ideological values associated with caring and/ or with the physical act of bearing children; the ethics of ‘interruption’ and caring (Baraitser 2008) which infuse our social and emotional lives. We now want to identify other work seeking to decolonise research in this area and also decentre heteronormative/white experiences by establishing a methodological approach – collaborative autoethnography (Chang et al., 2013) – seeking to be democratic, creative, and able to challenge conventional work offering research about, rather than with people who are often let down and undermined in academia. Instead, this project wants to celebrate diverse stories of maternity and consider how artists can contribute to healthcare research that might ensure fewer people from the global majority die.
Next Steps
In 2024/25 will hope to build a network in the UK and India, and establish a collaborative autoethnographic approach (Kalume & Moriarty, 2022), that will help us bid for future funding from the AHRC, to ensure the project is sustainable, and disseminate via an exhibition. Ruchika has already contributed to an AHRC project led by Professor Lesley Murray exploring how art can raise awareness about the lived experiences with gender-based violence (Murray et al., 2022) and her work was exhibited in the Transensory Mobilities exhibition in Brighton and Mexico City.
We hope our project will evolve and extend our connection and collaboration, but mainly we hope it diversifies and celebrates experiences of maternity in India, Brighton and beyond, demonstrating how the arts can and will lead to change around experiences of maternity.
References
Aughterson, K., & Moriarty, J. (2024). Performing Maternities – Creative and Critical discussions. (Performance and Communities). Intellect Books.
Baraitser, L. (2008). Maternal encounters: The ethics of interruption. Routledge.
Care Quality Commission. 2021. Maternity Survey.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/surveys/maternity-survey-2021
Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. W., &. Hernandez. K. C., (2013). Collaborative autoethnography. Left Coast Press.
Cousins, Sophie. 2020. ‘Covid19 has devastating effect on women and girls.’ The Lancet.
396: 1-2.
Kalume, T., & Moriarty, J. (2022). “It’s a collaborative affair”: Case Studies of Innovative Practice In and Across HE. In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Collaboration in Higher Education: Tales from the Frontline Bloomsbury
Magee Laura A., Benetou Vassiliki, George-Carey Rhiannon, Kulkarni Jayashri,
McKinsey, 2021. Seven charts that show Covid-19’s impact on women’s employment.
Murray, L., Holt, A., Lewis, S., & Moriarty, J. (2022). The unexceptional im/mobilities of gender-based violence in the Covid 19 pandemic. Mobilities, 18(3), 552-565. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2022.2118619
Williams, C. A. (2022). Black Maternal Experiences of Birthing and Postnatal Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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