Beast Mother is an ongoing research project that explores motherhood and care work as both sites of dominion and of transformative potential. It investigates the processes of re-subjectivation of the maternal body, a body that has been historically neutralised in its capacity for desire and self-determination. The project was supported by the 10th edition of the Italian Council, an international call supported by the Directorate–General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, strongly committed to the promotion of Italian artistic, critical, and curatorial research abroad. Through a series of events, activities, and artistic works, the research Beast Mother has fostered connections and created opportunities for discussion, manifesting as specific interventions within a broader research trajectory.
Inspired by the writings of Marija Gimbutas, Silvia Federici, Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti and Octavia E. Butler, the project originates from multiple lines of thinking, including cyberfeminism, anthropology, sci-fi literature and film. It is also deeply rooted in Grossi Maglioni’s own experience of motherhood and their involvement in the collective of artist-mothers The Glorious Mothers, which they co-founded, as well as in their engagement with the other groups formed during the workshops and historical groups, such as Gruppo Femminista Immagine of Varese, tracing transtemporal and transgeographical genealogies.
Unfolding through a rich and evocative visual language, Beast Mother weaves together prehistoric depictions of the female body with references to the animal and plant worlds, ancient mythology, magic, and science fiction. It challenges and expands perceptions of the maternal body while also striving to re-enchant the world, drawing on Federici’s vision of restoring the connections that capitalism has severed. This includes our bond with nature, with animals, with others, with our own bodies, and with the rites and myths that reveal our collective resources. Above all, echoing the work of Paul B. Preciado, it reclaims our connection with the monstrous as a political assertion, an identity in relational transition.
Stemming from the question of what it means to be a woman, a mother and an artist in our precarious and gender-unequal society, Beast Mother employs a feminist methodology to envision and practice forms of collaboration and contamination, fostering a powerful ecology of transformation and regeneration. It explores the idea of motherhood as something monstrous and appalling, while also acknowledging its potential to transcend the boundaries across species.
