'Artist and Mother', 2018

Is motherhood the last taboo left in contemporary art? The acclaimed KCET-TV documentary Artist and Mother, part of the Emmy-award-winning Artbound series, features four California artists who dare to make their own experience of motherhood a part of their work: Rebecca Campbell, Andrea Chung, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle. Not only do they juggle career and family like so many today, but they’ve also found inspiring ways to use the materials or images of motherhood in their art. Curators Naima Keith and Helen Molesworth, journalist Jori Finkel and professors Micol Hebron and Alexandra Moctezuma weigh in on the larger art-market dynamics and gender biases at stake, flipping the script that devalues women’s creativity.

Join us for this special film screening, followed by in conversation between co-producer Jori Finkel and Sydney-based artist Dr Cherine Fahd.

Jori Finkel is a Los Angeles-based a journalist specializing in the visual arts. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and the West Coast correspondent for The Art Newspaper. Her writing has also appeared in Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art, Town & Country and Art+Auction magazine, where she was previously senior editor. She developed and co-produced the 2018 KCET/Sylvia Frances documentary Artist and Mother and lectures widely on a range of cultural topics, from the birth of the photography market to the legacy of second-wave feminism.

For two decades Cherine Fahd (b.1974) has worked with documentary modes of image making. Much of her early works presented a surrealist engagement with spontaneous actions that involved hiding herself and her subjects from view, as well as the documentation of peculiar gestures. Currently, she continues to test the distinctions between the staged and unstaged image, while asking questions of the ways we perform for the camera. This has evolved from an enduring focus on familial experiences, which often to humorous effect, have provoked questions about the politics of appearance, concealment, race and identity, in relation to self and other. 

Running time: 56 minutes. A KCET and Sylvia Frances Films Production.