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2025 | Sole Author | In progress

Motherhood as boundary condition

Context

Motherhood introduces a radical reorganization of boundaries: between bodies, between needs, between agency and obligation, between autonomy and care.

Rather than representing motherhood symbolically, this project approaches it as a boundary condition, a term borrowed from physics to describe the constraints that define how a system can evolve. In this framing, motherhood is not an essence but a persistent set of pressures acting on the body and mind.

The work is informed by feminist materialism, embodied cognition, and Karen Barad’s agential realism, which understands boundaries as enacted rather than given.

Research Questions

• How does caregiving reshape the body’s perceptual and emotional boundaries?
• What forms emerge when the self is continuously interrupted, penetrated, and reorganized?
• Can material artifacts register care not as nurture alone, but as deformation, fatigue, and resilience?

Methodology

1. Boundary Modeling Through Objects

The project is developed through a series of sculptural and textile artifacts, each conceived as a boundary experiment rather than a finished object.

Materials include:

• Translucent fabrics (gauze, muslin, organza)
• Bent wire frames
• Acrylic constraints
• Hand stitching, rupture, and tensioning