Mothering Myths: An ABC of Art, Birth and Care

An A to Z of motherhood as artists have pictured it, from medieval images to work made now, read from many positions at once.

Laurie Cluitmans and Heske ten Cate edited the book, which Valiz published together with Centraal Museum in Utrecht and Nest in The Hague. Its form follows Valiz's earlier On the Necessity of Gardening, which Cluitmans also edited and Bart de Baets also designed: short alphabetical entries, broken up by longer essays. The starting point is the old view that motherhood belonged to private life and was too slight a subject for serious art. Against it the book makes room for shared and varied forms of mothering, for kinship, reproductive justice and radical ways of raising children, and for the artist who is also a mother, the woman who chose not to have children, the mother who is not a woman and the so-called raven mother.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes the preface. Other contributors include Rosemarie Buikema, Trudy Dehue, Babs Gons, Camille Henrot, bell hooks, Bart Rutten, Lisa Smit, Lily van der Stokker and Taka Taka. The book is linked to two exhibitions: Good Mom/Bad Mom: Unraveling the Mother Myth at Centraal Museum in 2025, and Thanks, But No Thanks at Nest in spring 2026.

Valiz, 2025. 312 pages, paperback, 24 x 32 cm. In English.