Anthropology of Motherhood Open Call Eligibility
ARTWORK ELIGIBILITY
Artists are invited to submit up to 3 individual pieces, provided that the pieces meet the following requirements:
- Artists are solely responsible for the delivery or shipping of their artwork
- All work must be original, designed and created by the applicant(s).
- All work must have some relation to the exhibition theme, Culture of Care, described on the application page or at the bottom of this page.
EXHIBITION REQUIREMENTS
AOM will be displayed at a to-be-determined Downtown Pittsburgh location during each day of the Festival, June 2–11, 2023.
- All work must not have been previously exhibited in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- All work must have been completed within the past 2 years from the exhibition date of June 2023.
- Video and sound components must be intended for display in a gallery setting. Documented performances (such as concerts, recitals, music performance, etc.) are ineligible. The video or sound art piece must be an original work of art.
- All work must be ready to hang, exhibit or be installed during the scheduled hours of operations as determined by the Festival. Installation-based works must be installed by the artist, and should take no longer than two 8-hour work days to install.
- All work must weigh less than 10 lbs.
- All work must be available for display for the full duration of the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, June 2-11, 2023
CANCELLATIONS
If your work is selected, a signed application, as well as agreement, is a commitment to show the selected piece(s) in the exhibition. Cancellations are discouraged. Notification must be received in writing to the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, 803 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 before March 31, 2023. Works selected for display may not be removed until the Festival’s conclusion. Failure to comply with the cancellation policy may result in denial from future Trust festivals.
CURATORS
Amy Bowman-McElhone is an Assistant Professor in Art History and Director of the Carlow University Art Gallery where she curates transdisciplinary, justice-oriented exhibitions and aims to cultivate the gallery as a space for experimentation and dialogue. Previously she served as the Assistant Vice President of the University of West Florida Historic Trust Museums, and the Director and Chief Curator of the UWF Pensacola Museum of Art. She is also a PhD candidate in art history at Florida State University. In her role at the UWF Historic Trust, Amy designed and implemented a long term vision for curation, education, public programs, and collections; created academic-museum programming through relationships with faculty, students, and university administration; designed museum-based programming to promote museums as learning communities and experiential learning spaces; and curated innovative exhibitions that engaged with relevant and vital currents in contemporary art and visual culture. Her research areas include modern and contemporary art, curatorial practices in Latin America, art in the public realm, and curatorial practice and theory. Her dissertation is on contemporary artist Mike Kelley and Los Angeles's "Post-Sunshine" scene of the 1980s and 1990s. She received her M.A. in art history from West Virginia University. Her thesis was on the sectarian murals in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was a research project that grew out of her study abroad experience at the University College Dublin. She chaired the panel, "Centering the Periphery: Decoloniality in Contemporary Art" at the 2018 SECAC conference in Columbus, Ohio. She has co-authored with Gabriela Germaná, an exhibition review “VACÍO MUSEAL: MEDIO SIGLO DE MUSEOTOPÍAS PERUANAS (1966–2016) Curated by Gustavo Buntinx, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima” published in the Journal of Curatorial Studies. Her forthcoming publications include: “Memory-Place and the Unintentional Monument: Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena (1961-2012) and its Legacy” in the edited volume Contested Commemoration in U.S. History: Diverging Public Interpretations, Routledge (2020). ‘“The Battle is Joined”: Contested Memorial Ecologies in Contemporary Public Art” in the edited volume Confederate Memory, Heritage Wars, and the Road to Reconciliation, University Press of Florida (2020). “Curatorial Studies and Conceptions of the Contemporary: Reading Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru Through Curatorial Practice” in the special issue, "Decolonizing Contemporary Latin American Art" in Arts journal.
Fran Flaherty is the creator of Anthropology of Motherhood and a deaf artist living in Pittsburgh for over 25 years. As a first generation immigrant from the Philippines, her work is centered on issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, maternal feminism, disability aesthetics, and social work. Her work is inspired by the care paradigm. A premise that human beings cannot survive alone and the progress of human beings, as a species, flows from our identity as social animals, connected to one another through ties of love, kinship, and clanship. It is the prospect of this harmony that inspired her to create Anthropology of Motherhood, an ongoing project which elevates the act of care-giving through fine art by transforming mundane objects of caregiving into valuable art pieces such as paintings, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. She also transforms busy public spaces into immersive installations that serve as places of respite for young children and their caregivers and is a member of the #notwhite collective. Recently, she was named in Art 511 Magazine’s “Top Ten NYC Artists Now”.
Fran currently resides in Allison Park with her husband Tim, their sons, Liam, Sean, and Lucas, and her hearing dog Olympia. Her most recent work can be found at Zhou B Center in Chicago, Illinois, Dyers Art Center in Rochester, NY, and Carlow University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA.
ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY OF MOTHERHOOD
In the ancient Olmec Civilization of Mesoamerica, carved images and icons of infants, umbilical cords, cave-wombs, human embryos and parental figures adorn the stone La Venta Thrones. These images, according to Carolyn Tate, represent the universal biological processes of gestation, birth, and regeneration as “metaphors for cosmogonic creation and renewal.” Today images of motherhood and pregnancy abound in our media landscape. However, this visibility leads to increased scrutiny of motherhood and the maternal. Through the culture of care, AOM seeks to cultivate a communal space for explorations of maternal identity and to generate a nurturing, participatory environment dedicated to the lived experiences of motherhood that connects birth and regeneration to creation and renewal.
At a time where social issues are increasingly being used as political currency, Anthropology of Motherhood is committed to bringing the ideals of intellectual, spiritual and emotional care to the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Through Public Art exhibits, and activities, we will continue to practice core values of compassion, care, inclusivity, acceptance, and diversity.
"The two great forces of human nature are self-interest and caring for others." Bill Gates uttered these words at the 2008 World’s Economic Forum. He was identifying the ideal form of capitalism, Creative Capitalism, where companies would not only exist to make a profit but also to serve the wider interest of humanness. Gates called for a paradigm shift in companies to create business practices that are successful in profit at the same time improving the lives of individuals worldwide.
A parallel of this call was reiterated in an article in The Atlantic Monthly written by the President of the New America Foundation, Anne Marie Slaughter. In her 2014 article, Slaughter describes the care paradigm. The premise of the care paradigm is that human beings cannot survive alone. We depend on each other to survive, therefore we must care for one another. Slaughter calls for us to refocus our pursuit of happiness from competition and financial success to a social infrastructure that gives equal importance to competition and caregiving, valuing the ability of people to care for one another the same way we value capitalist infrastructure.
What Gates and Slaughter failed to mention in their call was a way through which we can achieve this paradigm shift. It has been proven that art has always been a catalyst for change and there is no influence greater than Art. Art has the ability to change and shape cultures. Therefore, Art needs to be in the forefront of this ‘care paradigm’ shift. As artists we must help shift our core values from capitalist economy of competitive force, to an economy that recognizes the value of providers of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual care - which is essential to live up to the ideals of our society.
For questions or concerns: Message us now or call 412-456-1076.