#MAMAISAMAKER is an online artist residency that connects people who "make both children and art". Conceived and organized by artist Emma Jaster, this residency connects women makers all over the world and asks them to respond to prompts on Instagram generated by the group each week. The prompts cover various subjects at the intersection of motherhood and creative practice including gender roles, care-taking, womanhood, time, and more.

I conceive of my participation in this project as part social practice and part consciousness-raising. In some posts, I offer anecdotes from my personal experience, connecting the private sphere to relevant theoretical discourse around larger structures of power. Other posts are quick utterances or impressions, the seeds of more expanded musings or research. The #metoo movement proved how powerful the internet can be to chance consciousness and make an abstract problem feel concrete. An eco-system of mother artists are beginning to find each other and create networks of support, legitimizing the value of breaking taboos around motherhood as a new social and creative project. 

The following are the responses as part of this project for the fall 2018 season. To see the full text of each post follow @catherineccartwright in Instagram. To see the response from the full group for each prompt search the hashtag associated with the each prompt.