Mothering Myths by Laurie Cluitmans & Heske ten Cate

Mothering Myths: An ABC of Art, Birth and Care is a 300-page book by Laurie Cluitmans and Heske ten Cate. It was designed by Bart de Baets in a softcover 24×32 cm format and published by Valiz (Amsterdam):

Motherhood is a theme that touches upon the core of life, but has nevertheless been kept in the private sphere, haunted by clichés, stigmas and myths for a long time. Motherhood has always been seen as trivial, not as a subject for real art. At the same time, artists with a womb faced the cliché that they had to decide between making art or having a child, as they both would take up all the time and energy of the mother.

Mothering Myths unravels these clichés, stigmas and myths, through the lens of art, and a transhistorical and intersectional perspective, at the same time being very playful and open to many interpretations. It breaks the perspective of the individual mother-figure and makes space for collectivity, different forms of ‘mothering’ and political questions around self-determination. Mothering Myths presents the emancipatory nature of the artist- mother, the voluntarily childless woman, the non-female mother and the raven mother, through concepts as kinship, revolutionary parenting, womb consciousness and reproductive justice.