Kumu exhibition asks who fears motherhood

Kumu Art Museum will open a large-scale feminist exhibition on motherhood on Nov. 6, curator Eda Tuulberg told the magazine Kunst.ee in an interview published by ERR. Tuulberg said motherhood takes many forms, and each generation approaches the subject in ways it considers relevant.

“Who is afraid of motherhood?” will be on view in Kumu’s Great Hall through April 25, 2027. The exhibition focuses on Central and Eastern European art.

Tuulberg said her own experience of motherhood helped shape the project. When she had her first child at 26, she felt lonely, despite her children’s fathers sharing caregiving equally and offering strong support. She also struggled to find work in the art world that resonated with her experience.

She said she gained the confidence to propose a major museum exhibition after taking part in a two-year intensive seminar, “Narrating Art and Feminisms,” organised by universities in Warsaw and Buenos Aires. The seminar brought together researchers from Eastern Europe and Latin America who had studied motherhood in depth. Tuulberg said she felt she had “come home” to the subject.

Kumu director Kadi Polli assigned the exhibition to the museum’s Great Hall. Tuulberg said exhibitions about motherhood had been held in Eastern Europe, but not on such a large scale. One Kumu employee questioned whether motherhood was too “soft” a subject for the museum.

Tuulberg said she worried that an exhibition might repeat the narrow, heteronormative and heteropatriarchal ways motherhood is often represented in public discussion. During the research period, she became a mother for the second time and said the experience helped her consider parenthood from new perspectives alongside artists and theorists.

The exhibition’s title refers to a 2003 work of the same name by Czech performance artist Lenka Klodová. In the work, Klodová filmed a pregnant acquaintance walking through a Prague suburb in a long coat and sunglasses, displaying her pregnant belly and provoking irritation among some passersby.

Tuulberg said motherhood can also be understood as a revolutionary practice.