This Body of Work

Care. Loss. Time. Failure. Potential.

Our in-progress performance at The Bank is a relational, multisensorial, and immersive experience of the work/labour of motherhood, a worlding of sorts, and a durational installation that a small audience is guided through. What and who perform(s)? How does motherhood perform?  

This work is currently in-progress and being developed through residencies in both Ontario and Nova Scotia. As we produce the work as artists who negotiate the complexities of mothering, we make the work and are the work. 

This Body of Work is a multi-year project by the sense archive that includes an interdisciplinary gallery exhibition, a live performance, and a publication. The project explores critical feminist performance(s) of motherhood and maternal agency through lived bodily/cellular experiences. The work locates the body as the initial source and archive for the labour/work of the m/other and explores the themes of care, identity, trauma/loss, transformation, and lineage. We ask the questions: How do we/you experience motherhood? What is the work of motherhood? Who mothers? What are the practices that continue to sustain patriarchal ideations of motherhood in a liberal, capitalist, and settler colonial society?  

We gratefully acknowledge that the creation of This Body of Work has been supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, Dancemakers, and The Bank Art House.

the sense archive is/are: Ruth Douthwright, Sally Morgan, and Jessica Winton in collaboration with David Bobier, Lois Brown, Rebecca Picherack, Andrea Ritchie, Joshua Van Tassel, and Becka Viau.