International Open Call for Parenting Artists

Project AfterBirth is searching for professional contemporary artists from all over the world, of any gender and working in any visual, performing, text, film or digital art discipline to submit work they created in response to their own or their partner’s pregnancy, birth and/or early parenthood experiences. Submission deadline is Friday 15th May.

By the end of June 2015, a dedicated panel of international arts professionals will announce a selection from submissions which will feature in an exhibition about the impact of early parenthood on the artist. The Project AfterBirth selection panel comprises founding artists/curators Kris Jager & Mila Oshin (Joy Experiment, Exeter, UK), Stella Levy and Julie Gavin (White Moose, Devon, UK), Martha Joy Rose (Museum of Motherhood, New York, USA), Helen Knowles (The Birth Rites Collection, Manchester, UK) and Francesca Pinto (The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK). The exhibition of selected work will launch at White Moose gallery in the South West of the UK on 2nd October 2015 with the aim to tour to a number of UK, European and USA art spaces in 2016-19.

The panel will be looking for high quality and engaging work, reflecting a variety of personal perspectives on 21st century pregnancy, birth and early parenthood experiences by a mix of emerging and established professional contemporary artists working in traditional and new media.

Submitted work may also contribute to an interdisciplinary research initiative led by Project AfterBirth and a team of academics from the fields of obstetrics, mental health, midwifery, media studies, social justice, and women and gender studies, which aims to shed light on current Western pregnancy & birth practices, to investigate their impact on early parenthood experiences, and to inform their future. A further important aim is to present a larger selection of submitted work on a new online archive dedicated to contemporary art, social activism and research on the subject of early parenthood.

For all ENQUIRIES please email projectafterbirth@gmail.com.

For more information visit http://www.projectafterbirth.com/