PAST EXHIBITIONS
Image Description: A wide-view photograph of the interior of the Dyer Center for the Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology / National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Two floors with panelled glass bannister and various white walls at different angles with art displayed on those walls.
Anthropology of Motherhood
Intersections with Disability
DYER ARTS CENTER · NATIONAL TECHNICAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF
Rochester Institute of Technology
52 Lomb Memorial Dr, Rochester, NY 14623
August 28, 2023 – January 19, 2024
Artworks that offer diverse perspectives on the experiences of disabled artists/mothers and disabled artists/caregivers, highlighting how deafness and disability shape the experience of caregiving, parenting, and motherhood, while challenging assumptions and stereotypes.
Kate Csallner Image Description: A wet newborn baby clutches their mother’s breast as she looks down lovingly.
Three Rivers Arts Festival
Anthropology of Motherhood Feeding Room
PITTSBURGH, PA · 2016-2024
2024 · aom: Kinship & Othermothering
2023 · aom: Intersections with Disability
2022 · aom: Birthing a Movement
2021 · Anthropology of Motherhood
2020 · anthropology of Motherhood virtual festival
2019 · Anthropology of Motherhood
2018 · Anthropology of Motherhood
2017 · Anthropology of Motherhood
2016 · Anthropology of Motherhood
A functional, hybrid exhibition innovatively designed as an art space, an interactive amenity, and a place of respite for families with young children at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh. Featured works of art engage in the complex visual, material, emotional, corporeal, and lived experience of motherhood, caregiving, parenting, nurturing, and maternal labor.
Image Description: Artist Fran Flaherty wearing red lipstick and a black shirt against a blackground on the left. Artist Meg Foley on the right, with expressive hands raised in motion and wearing shirt with graphic lines with sharp contrast against a blurred landscape background.
Eternal Maternal
KELLY STRAYHORN THEATER
5941 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
Monday, September 18 – Sunday, December 17, 2023
Through Fran Flaherty’s Anthropology of Motherhood and Meg Foley’s Blood Baby, the visual art exhibition Eternal Maternal examines the details and expressions that encompass the nature of motherhood, acknowledging mothering as both an active pursuit and a fundamental state of existence, irrespective of and subject to gender. Flaherty and Foley delve into the realm of divine bodies, illuminating the inherent connection between mothering and the sacred. The works unveil the natural act of mothering intertwined with the profound forces of unconscious geology. Eternal Maternal serves as a testament to the extraordinary beauty and complexity inherent in the act of mothering, inviting contemplation, challenging preconceptions, and celebrating the diversity of maternal experiences. Curated by DS Kinsel.
Blood Baby: Communion with Meg Foley
Friday & Saturday, September 22*–23, 2023, 7:30pm
*Post performance discussion with ASL interpretation
Kelly Strayhorn Theater | 5941 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
Queer Parent Convening with Meg Foley
Wednesday, September 20, 2023, 7:00pm
KST’s Alloy Studios | 5530 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
Valerie George Image Description: An elder grandmother with glasses lies in a propped up hospital bed with her hand resting gently over the eyes and face of her granddaughter, the artist, who lovingly rests her head on the upper chest of her grandmother.
Anthropology of Motherhood
Culture of Care
Featuring a slate of artists who embrace the labor of care as “right and rewarding work.” Through video, sculpture, painting, and photography, their works address maternal identities with birth as a metaphor for regeneration, creation and renewal.
THE SLEETH GALLERY · OCTOBER 7 - october 29, 2021
59 College Ave Wesley Chapel Buckhannon, WV 26201
CARLOW UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY · OCTOBER 19, 2020 - FEBRUARY 5, 2021
3333 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
MCDONOUGH MUSEUM OF ART · JUNE 11 - JULY 24, 2021
525 Wick Ave, Youngstown, OH 44502
Michelle Gallagher Image Description: Barbed wire is twisted like a fence in the shape of the delicate, pink and gray lacy underwear that rests directly inside of it.
Responding to the Overturn
of Roe v. Wade
What does the 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade mean for people who can become pregnant, for healthcare providers, for the LGBTQIA+ community, for people of color, and for affected intersectional groups and communities? Artists responded with work that examines the current politicization of abortion/reproductive care and bodily autonomy, and explores the personal, the historical, the communal, and the ethics of care. This virtual art exhibition engaged as an urgent and renewed call to action leading up to November’s election.
Fran Flaherty Image Description: A pregnant belly and bellybutton is shown with illuminations of gold that highlight the stretch marks, curves and lines.
Post-Erotica
A solo show examining the experiences and polarizing feelings of mothers with newborn infants by exploring breastfeeding, maternal body image, and post-partum depression.