Nuestras Madres: Forming Political Subjects en la mesa

Abstract

NUESTRAS MADRES is an artwork by the art collective IDA performed at the AHRA Architecture and Feminisms Conference (2016), which consisted of a collective ritual and a poetry reading. The ritual created a safe space where a group of participants sat around a table taking turns in sharing their stories about their mothers while embroidering their mothers’ names on a single tablecloth. These were synthesized into a poem and presented the following day. IDA investigates issues in private and public space connected to knowledge production and gender normativity. Even though the role of mothers and their knowledge is usually connected to the private sphere, the knowledge of our mothers and their mothers shared en la mesa - over the table - is important in the construction of political subjects. How has this knowledge helped us survive in society as women, queer, indigenous, working class, Muslim, immigrant - as human beings?