Hera Gallery is proud to present Oh, Mother, A National Juried Exhibition, juried by Nadiah Rivera Fellah, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Save the date for  a virtual artist talk to be held on Thursday, June 1st at 7pm via zoom. 

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In the spring of 2022, Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation began to talk about our 50th anniversary as one of the first women-run artist cooperatives to open in the United States in 1974. Shortly after this discussion, the leak started to circulate that Roe v. Wade would be overturned before its own 50th feminist anniversary in 2023. The story came out around Mother’s Day. A group of us at Hera started to talk not only about the potential ramifications of the ruling, but also about motherhood itself. While frequently idealized in public discourse, we wanted to look at motherhood in all its complexity, as well as at the absence of desired motherhood. Throughout 2022 the abortion rights discussion swelled and ultimately burst into the Dobb's Decision. Hera’s conversation transitioned to ask, what happens now? Hera began looking for works which spoke to the overturn of Roe v. Wade in the virtual exhibition Objects of Agency, currently on view at heragallery.org. However, our conversation circled back to the bigger picture on the choice of motherhood. We wanted to hear voices not only from the perspective of mothers, but of all the people surrounding mothers and who could be mothers; including their children, partners, and even their parents. We were interested in the voices of mothers who were not born female cis gender, mothers who raise their children alongside other mothers, and everyone else who does not fit the traditional or stereotypical mother mold. Our conversation culminated in developing a national open call for art exhibition around the diversity and complexities of motherhood, entitled Oh, Mother. We are currently inviting artists to submit works which examine, unravel, deconstruct, and re-write the myths of motherhood through an online application. To select the works for the exhibition, we were most fortunate to secure Nadiah Rivera Fella from the Cleveland Museum of Art as juror for the show. Rivera Fella was part of the curatorial team of the 2021/2022 exhibition Picturing Motherhood Now at the Cleveland Museum of Art and thus made an excellent choice for a juror of Oh, Mother. The exhibition opens Saturday, May 13th and will run until June 17th, 2023. The opening reception will be held on Mother’s Day weekend, Saturday May 13th, from 6-8pm at Hera Gallery. A virtual artist talk will also be held during the exhibition.

Participating Artists: Beizar Aradini, Sybil Archibald, Cassie Arnold, Raissa Bailey, Brandin Barón, Jasmine Best, Shweta Bist, Desirae Brown, Joanne Delmonico, Jessica Dietz, Debra Disman, Rebecca Ford, Raquel Fornasaro, Bonnie Jaffe, Marcella Kelley, Leah Klister, Moriah LeFebvre, Roberta Levitow, Madeleine Lord, Caroline McAuliffe, Haley Neville, Linda Plaisted, Sylvie Redmond, Sawyer Rose, Christina Santner, Ellen Shattuck Pierce, Leslie Sills.

Juror Bio: Nadiah Rivera Fellah is an associate curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art with a specialty in Latin American and global contemporary art. Shows she has curated include “New Histories, New Futures”(2021), Firelei Báez for FRONT International (2022), and (with co-curator Emily Liebert) “Picturing Motherhood Now” (2021). In her previous position at the Newark Museum of Art, she curated a traveling exhibition of work by Wendy Red Star and was tasked with integrating Latin American works into the American galleries prior to an expansion. Her publications include Picturing Motherhood Now, Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth, and contributions to Aperture Magazine, among others.

“It was an honor to spend time with the work of a national pool of artists, whose artistry and passion for their crafts made for a rich group of applicants and a particularly difficult task for me as a juror making a selection. Taken from an incredibly diverse range of artists in terms of gender, race, background, and chosen medium, I found it fascinating how each artist challenged familiar or expected archetypes of motherhood with frank openness, pain and outrage, wry humor, empowered representation, and sometimes a combination of these elements. Each of their perspectives enrich the subject, touching on everything from changing bodies, Black and brown motherhood, the perceived selflessness of motherhood, and complex feelings of loss, detachment, joy, and personal growth. Beyond the direct predicament of being a mother oneself, artwork also engages with the history and rituals of motherhood, exploring the universality of the term and re-thinking its role and representation in religious iconography and contemporary popular culture. The themes in Oh, Mother will undoubtedly resonate with diverse audiences and communities in Rhode Island, and beyond.”

-Nadiah Rivera Fellah, Juror

Local Voices: A Hera Invitational Exhibition On Motherhood

Due to the overwhelming success of this national call for art, Hera Gallery has extended the conversation of Oh Mother, to our BackSpace Gallery. The artworks were selected by Hera Gallery, to see more specifically what local artists and our community have to say on the topic of motherhood.