Captive Maternals: Curated by Jill Moniz

Scholar and Revolutionary Love seeker Joy James writes, “Captive Maternals are not identified by individual or personal identities—not by gender, social status, class or formal education. They are a function, not an identity. They/we are identified by their/our function in service, caretaking, sacrifice, and resistance to dishonor and disposability.”

For some time, I have been examining my own status as a captive maternal. Moving through James’s various stages of capital maternal function, from protest to maroon geographies to strategic rest, I find I am unable to unburden myself from working toward the architecture of freedom. Shaping this work with visual language and community engagement was my mother’s mission I inherited and have instilled in my children. Out of worry, fear, loathing and love, I recognize my function, but also the limited capacity of my work as curator to build what must be built. Therefore, this exhibition is my last curatorial exercise – a tactical renegotiation with transformative arts experiences, but never abandoning art and artists as the infrastructures of care, the breath of love and responsibility for me and my kin.

The Captive Maternals in this exhibition use art to “create political and spiritual families that incorporate and expand beyond the personal or individual family. Resistance is stabilized by actions that foster healthy radicalism and new bones’ growth despite poisoned environments” (James).  For me, June Edmonds, April Banks, Glen Wilson, Miguel Rosario, Sheng Lor, Susu Attar and Iva Gueorguieva comprise a sacred seven, part of my larger quilombo, whose visual language as wild seeds are the tools, language and hope for our communities.

James notes, “Our generative powers are often stolen, siphoned, and repurposed by the state, corporation, and nonprofit. Steal them back.” These seven artists do that in diverse but equally necessary ways. From abstracting the geographies of radical joy, to reimagining sanctified imagery, and producing counternarratives of identity to poetically encapsulating grief, Edmonds, Banks, Wilson, Rosario, Lor, Attar and Gueorguieva paint, sculpt, weave, refuse, resist and commit their praxes to the captive maternal cause.

These artists steal back time, fortifying the liminal as a place of purpose and creativity. They steal back aesthetics, the engines of diasporas and remembering. And they steal back the joy of working in concert for our greater good.