(From top left to right)
The Mothers, Jenny Saville, 2011
Mother Nursing With Lace, Lauren J. Turner, 2020
Loie Hollowell and her child in front one of her Orb paintings
Krista and Colum, Kate Hansen, 2010
Pregnancy, Xiaohong Zhang, 2013

This coming weekend, I will present a paper on matricentric art at the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), held in San Diego. The paper is part of an exploratory session on the theme of Motherhood and Religion.

I will also deliver a separate paper/report for a different group related to my Rebirth Tunnel Immersive Art Installation.

Some of the artists I will discuss in my paper on matricentric art have been featured on the Visualizing Birth website and include: Kate Hansen, Wenji Billow, Amanda Greavette, Loie Hollowell, Jenny Saville, Lauren Turner, Shauna Wiley-Naefke, Xiaohong Zhang.

My intellectual work on this topic is an artistic extension of Andrea O’Reilly’s work on matricentric feminism, a topic that she explored in a groundbreaking way in her 2016 book, Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice.