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The artists, performers, writers, and thinkers of this panel examine culturally conflicting assumptions, expectations, and perceptions of maternity. While the maternal body has gained currency in much popular culture and the contemporary art world, in too many instances, the maternal potential of female bodies – whether realized or not – still causes them to be stigmatized, censored, or otherwise treated as inappropriate: cultural expectations of maternity create one set of prejudices against women whose bodies or experiences do align with those same expectations, and another set of prejudices against those whose do not. The artists and scholars of this panel discuss how maternal expectations shape creative work and designed environments, and they simultaneously highlight alternative ways of existing in relation to those expectations.

Using both critical and creative presentation styles, panelists draw attention to ways in which cultural, geographic, ethnic, or religious contexts can determine what is “appropriate” for an artist who is a mother, for a mother who is an artist, and for artists whose bodies may be seen as potentially maternal. Panelists consider art addressing infertility and reproductive expectations; ancestral bodies and kinship in Indigenous contexts; collaborative processes that intentionally – and defiantly – incorporate family into artistic practice; and “inappropriate” bodies as speculative entry points into navigating the design and relations of possible futures. Our discussant connects the presentations to broader contexts by asking “What was, is, and will be at stake in undoing the mothering body’s (in)visibility?”