Faculty member Miriam Schaer has been lighting up London and Rotterdam by presenting on panels and showing her work at conferences exploring contemporary issues in motherhood. At the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference at London Southbank University, Schaer gave a panel presentation as well as exhibited her work at Alternative Maternals group exhibition, which was associated with the conference.

The artists work “challenged questions cultural dismissals and dismissal of the mother as a valid anchor for artistic expression, while embracing a conceptual artistic framework and rejecting tendencies toward simplifying the meaning of motherhood and mother/child relationships.”

Schaer then presented again on a panel at the The Mothernists conference (June 5-8) in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Mothernists asked “philosophical, political, aesthetic and social questions made visible through the co-existing practices of mothering and cultural re- production, bringing these into the diverse discourses that the participants professionally as artists, writers, philosophers, curators, historians and educators are part of.” Schaer addresses motherhood through societal biases against childless women, and “reverse mothering” — her experience caring for her own mother after she had become too aged and ill to care for herself.