Curated by Blakelee Pieroni
Featured image is from an NFT by Blakelee Pieroni
Saturday, March 25 – Friday, April 21
ChaShaMa Space for Artists
340 East 64th Street, New York
On view at ChaShaMa until April 21, the group exhibition m OTHER is a provocative and contemplative showcase of artwork that explores the infrequently discussed topic of stepmotherhood. Through a range of live performance art, mixed media installations, workshops, and various visual mediums, m OTHER presents a powerful narrative that challenges the societal norms surrounding the misunderstood role stepmothers play within a familial unit.
The show’s opening reception on March 25 featured three performances directed by Clare Cheney:
Personhood
Performance Artists: Kayla Naije, Maya Dwyer, Tianna Brown
Choreographer: Blakelee Pieroni
Dir: Clare Cheyne
Umbra
Lead: Rachel Tiedemann
Performance Artists: Kayla Naije, Maya Dwyer,Tianna Brown
Choreographer: Blakelee Pieroni
Dir: Clare Cheyne
Treading on Ice
Dancer: Maddy Hall
Choreographer: Blakelee Pieroni
Dir: Clare Cheyne
Opening weekend also featured a Stepmom Writing Workshop, hosted by JaneE Hindman, offering an opportunity for participants to process their lived experiences in a safe space, uniquely curated to reflect the experiences of an infrequently discussed societal role.
Creatrix was fortunate enough to speak with curator and exhibiting artist Blakelee Pieroni.
Blakelee! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
1. Your curatorial concept of mOTHER really struck me. You raise a compelling point, that Step-Mother is a role in society so rarely heralded as Subject. Most often reduced to an objectified trope in others’ stories, we don’t have to look very far to find a plethora of Stepmother cliches – most notably the Evil Stepmother in nearly every fairy tale.
Your show m OTHER offers a refreshing and vital perspective. Please tell us about your experiences and inspiration for this exhibition.
As a full-time “childless” stepmom, I was blindly unaware of the obstacles that lay ahead when a women trespasses through divinity and into motherhood. I grew up with a man who adopted me at birth, he was not my biological father, but he was to my two younger siblings. My parents divorced, and my mother married my step dad when I was 17, which brought two more step brothers and lastly the glue of our large blended family, their son. Moving over thirty times throughout my childhood, I became accustomed to consistent change, adaption, and resilience. When I met my soulmate, (who happened to have two children) in many ways it felt like the reason as to why I had encountered such an everlasting shift in family as I grew up.
I had firsthand experience of what it was like to have step parents and the day-to-day challenges that it presented. This gave me an idea of what to expect and made me feel prepared in many ways to take on the responsibility of raising other people’s children. My initial thought was that there was no better way to create generational progression, and course correction, than to embody the ideal parent and be there for my stepchildren in every way possible. However, the one thing that I did not anticipate was the jarring and immediate perception and label that came with being a stepmother. This stems from the drastically different perspective of stepfatherhood and stepmotherhood. I soon realized that when you enter the “nuclear” family and begin to exist, there is a thick layer of judgment and subjection deeply rooted in the ultimate expectation of being a mother, and even more specifically, being a women.
After five years of navigating the sea storm of stepmotherhood I am all too familiar with the distinct separation that “we” have within society. It felt like the only option was to create and flush out the distortions of the archetypical stepmom. The work, and the exhibit did not feel like a choice, it was what needed to be done in order to be what I intended to be for my stepchildren and myself. My intention is to bring accurate representation to this particularly complex and deeply personal life path. My goal was to have as many stepmoms participate as possible.
mOTHER is my amendment to my truth.
2. mOTHER is a multidisciplinary exhibition that features the work of four artists, Nicole DiFabio, JaneE Hindman, Karen Piovaty, and yourself. Please share about your selection process with regards to the artists and their work.
The exhibit was originally granted space with the idea of conducting a month-long research/ data collection of stepmoms being interviewed and creating in the same space at the same time. Instead of applications, I was receiving messages from stepmoms who were hesitant to apply because of how public their personal experiences would be. They were afraid of judgment, and I too was scared. I decided that it would be more impactful to showcase work from stepmoms who had already created art and felt confident in sharing and speaking about the subject matter with the world. That’s when I remembered Karen Piovaty’s “The Other Mother” exhibit from 1999. I had found the collection during a difficult time when my husband and I were going through a heavy Child Protective Services case (my stepchildren’s mother is an addict), and Karen’s art kept me sane. I would estimate that I looked at her work daily for a period of at least a year.
I contacted Karen, and within two days, she replied and agreed to show the collection again in the
mOTHER exhibit. It was then that I knew I had something of substance, and it revitalized the exhibit’s purpose. Karen went above and beyond by sending her work from Canada and even referred me to JaneE Hindman. JaneE had two stepmothers growing up and brought a different perspective to the show that was desperately needed. She embodied how critical it is to change the stereotypical narrative of the stepmom because it gravely affects our stepchildren as well. But what felt most destined was that JaneE, a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies
At San Diego State University at the time, had critiqued Karen’s collection in an essay, “Disturbing the Piece(s): Re-viewing the Role of “The Other Mother”, back in 1999. The essay is hanging in the exhibition today and both artists attended the opening reception of m OTHER to see their collaborative efforts hanging together again almost twenty five years later. The final words of the essay read, “Let us witness in ‘The Other Mother’ a crucial truth about the transformative power of a woman’s anger: expressing her alienation from culture’s conventional representations of her and using that alienation to articulate her difference from them is how a woman can reclaim herself.”
Nicole Di Fabio is a queer painter who focuses on women and interpretations of gender expression. She is a stepmom of two children with her partner, co-parent with a trans person. Her family dynamic brought a perspective to the exhibit that showed how encompassing the stigma of stepmom is. In addition to her experience as a stepmom her work also speaks to a level of intimacy and devotion stepmoms have to their partners. She elicits an answer to “why we stick around” and exemplifies that even as stepmothers there is an individual relationship to our partners in which the definition of teammate goes beyond the traditional marital vows. A stepparent is persistently participating in our partners past, present, and future with the responsibility of raising children we did not make. With the three artists and myself I felt like the exhibit provided vastly distinct and diverse perspectives on this heavily complex, yet severely underrepresented subject matter. The collection was well-rounded, authentically genuine and profoundly important to share.
3. The live performances from the opening reception were recorded and the footage is being minted into NFTs, to be incorporated into a cohesive art collectible that compliments the physical gallery exhibit. Please tell us more about this.
I am passionate about creating NFTs that showcase live movement and performance art. As an artist, I have always been drawn to movement and performance art as one of my favorite media to artistically express raw, inexplicable emotion and to genuinely feel the connection with a live audience. I believe that NFTs provide an excellent platform to capture and preserve the essence and intimacy of live performance art in a way that traditional media cannot. By creating NFT collections that capture a live performance and interaction between artist and audience as an immutable moment in time, I hope to bring more attention to this underrepresented art form and highlight its unique beauty and significance. The opening reception consisted of four performance artists in character and performing for four hours straight. The commitment was like nothing I have seen before. I am so grateful for the NFT Film, and the filmmaker Clare Cheyne, for capturing the essence of the performance and unique artistic moment in time, now living on the blockchain forever. In addition to the performance itself, the entire exhibit from artists, to performers, to filmmaker, to PR, the crew is all women led. That shows through the footage, and it is felt with every second spent in the space.
Moreover, I am excited about the possibilities that NFTs bring to the world of movement and performance art. With NFTs, we can create immersive experiences that capture the energy and emotion of live performances, allowing audiences to connect with and experience the art in a whole new way. The ability to showcase the unique, raw emotion of live performance art through NFTs is truly revolutionary. I am honored to be a part of this movement, and I am eager to continue pushing the boundaries of what is possible with crypto art.
4. Tell us more about the Stepmom Writing Workshop. Who facilitated it, what was the end goal, what was the process, were there any breakthroughs?
JaneE Hindman facilitated the workshop in the gallery, within the middle of all the artist’s work and on the wave of the opening reception’s energy. The environment was intimate, and we were all exposed. Several women came, all with different relationships to the word stepmom. I am proud to say my husband joined as the only man and brought a perspective to the workshop that I do not think we expected. We began with short prompts related to being a stepmom in all forms, addressing various emotions and memories. The workshop was paced so that you wrote what you thought and moved on. It was a method that made us all individually feel like we were letting go of what the pen was writing, while periodically being able to share what we wrote with no comments from the others. We were asked to affirmatively declare “I’m in ” after sharing, to renew our commitment to the workshop and to the growth it would provide for us. As each individual shared more deeply and truthfully, our experiences filled the gallery and our tears collectively summoned massive power. Personally, I am so attached and immersed in my stepmom experience being full time with small children; I got more out of hearing the other women speak than I did writing. I am still too confined to the role and searching, that I couldn’t write what I was feeling and JaneE made me realize how important this ability is. Too often women keep things in; and please, embody, distract, and nurture everyone but themselves. The stepmom writing workshop forced you to actively participate and look within. It ended with a surreal determination to continue the m OTHER exhibition with more women, longer duration, and larger space. It made us all realize how much more work there is to be done. All who attended the workshop signed up for JaneE Hindmans’ virtual, weekly writing workshops.
5. What do you hope to impart to viewers, by presenting this exhibition?
One cannot analyze the role of stepmother without facing the historically undervalued norms of women in general. women are the majority of the labor force. One in eight women are diagnosed with depression and that statistic is elevated for mothers. One in four women will experience sexual or physical violence from a partner. Over 70% of second marriages that involve children will fail… do we see a pattern of unrealistic expectations on women? On mothers? On stepmothers?
I hope m OTHER brings extreme awareness to the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional labor that mothers endure for the sake of “family”. I want blended families to embody the needed shift in domestic roles where the traditional patterns of mother are broken and we collectively recreate a new outlook on what it is to be a mother. I have a desire to break free from the definitions that “females” have endured due to archaic norms under a patriarchal atmosphere. The stepmom fight should be intersectional.
We are allowed to edit what does not serve us. We are allowed boundaries. We are allowed. We need to allow ourselves to be.
Overall, I want to express that raising children, biological or not, is important and the urgency for generational change has never been needed more. Let’s reintroduce the village.
