GLITCH MOMMY

Glitch Mommy is a conceptual body of work that addresses adoption in the 21st Century.

Glitch Mommy evolves out of a personal story of an unsuccessful, decade long attempt to adopt and all that came with that experience. These lens-based artworks document the historical context in which my spouse and I, as two women married and living in the United States, pursued adoption previous to and during the passage of marriage equality laws. Glitch Mommy currently consists of a video installation and more than forty, unique works created by layering images, and then reworking each piece with water, paint, ink, and other media.

  • The past decade has seen significant cultural change. Social movements promoting right relationship among people while exposing institutionalized misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are part of our cultural dialogue. The aim of this project is to break open a conversation regarding hidden bias in adoption practices through the use of metaphorical characters and abstraction. The images invite an argument for a new language in which to re-examine policy, an imagination for more inclusive services, and curiosity for updated curricula to students and current service providers to improve the adoption process, one’s understanding and experience of adoption, and ultimately, improve the lives of children and families – both birth and adoptive.

    I move from attempts to erase what feels like a blot, a stain that I seek to obliterate from memory, to Glitch - an epoch that is neither error nor mistake, neither flaw nor failure, but a powerful interface between seams – where identity, touch, gesture, mutability strip the photograph as photograph and where glitch intervenes with the image as it begins communing, queering, and transforming the proscriptive patterns and boundaries. 

Installation Views

 

Installation Views for Glitch Mommy Solo Exhibition, Avila College, Kansas City, MO

 

Installation Views for Glitch Mommy Solo Exhibition, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH

 

Installation Views for The Studio Window Exhibition, Justine Kurland Studio, Brooklyn, NY:

Justine Kurland Studio is pleased to present The Studio Window curated by Xiangyun Chen, a two-part exhibition by fourteen artists who use photography to reflect on identity, intimacy, and spirituality. Each artist experiments with form, material, and diverse subjects to depict intimate thresholds as a means of connection and liberation.

Installation Views for Touch Points Exhibition, Hyde Part Arts Center, Chicago:

“Touch Points presents work from participants in New Edition, a program developed by the Art Center for artists to learn and make work in a medium with which they have had little to no previous experience. Educator, independent curator and gallerist Claudine Isé curates the exhibition, which features the work of 7 artists, each of whom presents one piece in the medium for which they are known alongside a new artwork made during the 10-week program. New Edition was conceived as a way for artists to thoughtfully experiment in another medium that they have never before seriously attempted.”