{"id":4699,"date":"2025-03-30T20:45:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T18:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2025-05-26T10:52:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T08:52:24","slug":"woman-mother-and-artist-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/woman-mother-and-artist-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman, Mother, and Artist: Interview with Writer and Curator Nikki Columbus"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Nikki Columbus and Katha Eitner<\/em> (Fak. 1 – Art in context)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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BEHIND THE INTERVIEW …<\/strong>

The working conditions of artists is an issue that has gained relevance. Globally, the cultural sector is marked by precariousness, exacerbated by a neoliberal system that views artistic labor as “non-traditional.” This generates short-term labor dynamics, temporary contracts, informal jobs, and constant socioeconomic vulnerability. While precariousness affects everyone, from an intersectional perspective, women, sexual dissidents, migrants, racialized people, and those working in the Global South face even greater challenges.

In this interview, I wanted to focus on the specific case of mothers, a topic deeply linked to my own experience. Since 2011, I\u2019ve worked in the cultural and arts sector, and since 2018, I\u2019ve been a mother to a little girl\u2014who is now growing up fast. Motherhood was a radical change in every aspect of my life, including my professional life. These changes and challenges intensified in 2019 when I moved from Chile to Berlin to study at the UdK Berlin. I arrived with my daughter, who was just a year and a half old at the time. Being a mother, a migrant, and an artist in a new country was a huge challenge. Although I found understanding from some professors regarding my caregiving role, the sense of loneliness was inevitable. I missed having a support network or references to other mother-artists who were going through something similar.

In this context, I discovered the book Why Call It Labor? On Motherhood and Art Work<\/em><\/a>, edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, with texts by Basma Alsharif, Lara Khaldi, and Nikki Columbus. This book was a refuge amid that experience. I found phrases like these that comforted me and made me feel accompanied:

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how the discourse about motherhood either concerns how you\u2019re too selfish or too giving. A binary with nothing in between.\u201d (p.16)<\/mark><\/strong><\/em>

\u201c(…) that understanding my circumstances as structural rather than a result of my own failure gives me great emotional comfort, as I hope it might to others.\u201d (p.30)<\/strong><\/em>

\u201c(…) it isn\u2019t waged work \u2013 but it should be, as the \u2018Wages for Housework\u2019 campaign in the 1970s convincingly argued! Being a mother is seen as a \u2018private\u2019 decision. Parenting isn\u2019t structurally supported, and it\u2019s even worse when you\u2019re a freelancer, like many artists or writers.\u201d (p.48)<\/strong><\/em>
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Cover of the book Why call it labor? On motherhood and art work<\/em>, published by Mophradat and Archive Books.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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The book was a gateway for reflecting on my own experience and that of so many other mothers in the art world. That\u2019s why it was an honor to interview Nikki Columbus, one of its authors. Nikki is a writer, a curator, a mother, and lives in New York. Besides her artistic experience, she knows firsthand the lack of social protection for mothers. This became evident after a case of discrimination she experienced with MoMA PS1<\/a>, when the institution withdrew its job offer upon learning that she had had a baby.

In this conversation, we talked about that episode and many other topics, always with the underlying question: how do we resist as mothers to sustain our artistic practices and continue being workers in the cultural sector? This interview took place between Berlin and New York in November 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Katha (K):<\/mark> If we go straight to the central topic of the interview, how does the art world treat those who decide to have children?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nikki (N):<\/mark><\/strong> Like every other sector of the economy, the art world does not want to reorganize itself to accommodate pregnancy, recovery, and parenthood. As of now, only nine states in the US allow workers paid leave after giving birth or adopting, and even then it is highly restrictive. For example, the law applies only to those who have worked a minimum number of hours or earned above a certain amount; it covers only six to twelve weeks\u2019 time off; and the maximum weekly benefit is calculated according to a statewide average rather than workers\u2019 actual wages. Most artists are not salaried employees, but some states allow self-employed workers to purchase an insurance policy in order to access paid family leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> What specific barriers do artist-mothers face? What challenges and discrimination do you perceive compared to artists who are not mothers or male artists?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> To give one example, many artist residencies only provide accommodation and support for the artist, not their family. This makes it difficult for many artists with children\u2014especially women, who are still generally the primary caregiver\u2014to accept numerous professional opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many events in the art world take place after work hours\u2014exhibition openings, talks and lectures, performances\u2014presenting another challenge for artists as well as curators who are mothers. On top of all this, the US has limited affordable childcare options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Museums run on the excess unpaid labor of young women in their twenties and thirties. New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art is infamous for this sort of exploitation, hiring half the number of curatorial assistants than are really needed to research and organize an exhibition, and then demanding they work twelve-hour days. This is unfair to ask of any employee, but it\u2019s particularly difficult for those with young children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> Regarding your case with MoMA: You denounced discrimination based on gender, pregnancy, and your role as a caregiver\u2014three levels of discrimination. Were there any concrete changes after your complaint?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> I\u2019ll just quickly recap the case as readers are probably unaware of it. I started interviewing for the position of associate curator of performance at MoMA PS1 in April 2017. I was already pregnant, but not showing; I never got very big, and it turned out some people never realized I was pregnant. The chief curator offered me the job in August, by which time I had given birth. I thought perhaps he had known I was pregnant and just didn\u2019t mention it\u2014he had interviewed me for the job over the course of numerous in-person conversations. But when we talked on the phone and I said I had just had a baby at the end of July, he was shocked. He demanded, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell me this two months ago?\u201d He even insisted that he wouldn\u2019t have \u201ccut loose\u201d other applicants if he had known about this. Previously, the chief curator had suggested that I start the job on a part-time basis. I didn\u2019t ask for anything more, other than working a few days from home at the start as I recovered from a cesarian section. Yet I soon received an e-mail from the museum\u2019s chief operating officer saying that the job offer was \u201cno longer active\u201d because I couldn\u2019t \u201cperform the job as it was structured.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s often hard to prove discrimination; in some situations, one might suspect that an opportunity was denied for reasons other than the official one, but there\u2019s no clear evidence. In my situation, however, it was blatantly obvious. And just to be clear: In the US, discrimination on the basis of gender, pregnancy, or caregiver status is illegal. So, I sued. Actually, I first tried to get a journalist to write about what had happened. When that didn\u2019t work, I decided to go the legal route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lawyer I spoke with had an ambitious plan to use my case to make a larger point about discrimination and restrictions on paid family leave at US museums. However, he wanted to be paid upfront, and I couldn\u2019t afford it. I was then introduced to A Better Balance, a legal advocacy nonprofit that focuses on \u201cwork-family justice.\u201d They partnered with a leading civil-rights law firm in New York, who agreed that their payment would be taken out of any financial compensation that I received. However, these lawyers were more narrowly focused on just my specific case, and their demands from MoMA PS1 were more limited than I would have liked. They filed a <\/a>complaint<\/a> with the NYC Commission on Human Rights, and after a few months, MoMA PS1 asked to settle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I had wanted to follow through with the entire legal process, my lawyers strongly urged me to negotiate a<\/a>settlement<\/a>. I received some money, and the museum was required to revise their workplace policies\u2014and in some instances, even write new ones\u2014on anti-discrimination protections, reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and childbirth, and nursing mothers\u2019 rights, among other areas. Crucially, the museum also had to distribute these policies to their employees, who had previously not been informed of their rights. These were all significant changes. However, too often the institutional culture of a place still makes it difficult for women to demand all the protections and benefits that they are allowed under the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, because I\u2019m talking about this case with you, I refused to sign an NDA\u2014either a non-disclosure agreement or a non-disparagement agreement. It\u2019s incredibly important that women speak up about their experiences. This kind of discrimination will keep happening as long as its victims help the perpetrators to cover it up. So it\u2019s vital to push back and refuse to sign NDAs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> I also had an experience of discrimination during my pregnancy. I was working with an artistic organization, and they fired me because they assumed I would not be able to meet the job requirements. They didn\u2019t even give me the chance to try or come to an agreement. This left me unemployed, which is common for artists: having no right to maternity leave, being unprotected, and still having to work with my very young child. What can be done to protect and support artist-mothers, especially considering that most face informal jobs or work without contracts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> I\u2019m so sorry to hear about your experience; unfortunately, it\u2019s frighteningly common. In the US, artists are like any other freelance worker in the \u201cgig economy\u201d who doesn\u2019t have access to certain income protections. On the other hand, many European countries offer highly subsidized childcare, or provide financial support to families who choose to take care of their children at home. In Germany, this allowance is known as the Kindergeld<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> Katja Praznik, a Slovak sociologist, has studied the working conditions in the arts. She suggests that certain narratives sustain the precariousness of artists, such as the idea of “doing it for the love of art.” This can normalize exploitation. In the case of motherhood and motherhood in the arts, what narratives do you think are normalized?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> A decade ago, the artist Tracey Emin famously told an interviewer that being both a mother and an artist leads to conflict and compromise: \u201cThere are good artists who have children. Of course there are. They are called men.\u201d<\/a> Marina Abramovi\u0107 said something similar around the same time. If women were saying this publicly, you can imagine what male curators said in private. However, this taboo subject is starting to be tackled by women artists of my generation. In the past few years, artists such as Camille Henrot and Tala Madani have made work about their experiences as mothers, and numerous group exhibitions have been organized around this theme. I actually wrote about this in a piece<\/a> for the Summer 2023 issue of Artforum<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> There is an interesting contradiction in societal expectations: on one hand, there is social pressure for women to become mothers; on the other, in the workplace, being a mother is seen as a problem. Phrases like \u201cdon\u2019t say you\u2019re pregnant\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t mention you want to have children\u201d are common because of the belief that motherhood diminishes professional development opportunities. What is your opinion on this contradiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark> It\u2019s not a contradiction: Society is still organized around the idea that women who have children stay at home and provide domestic labor, and women without children can go out and get paying jobs. It\u2019s absolutely true that mothers miss out on professional opportunities. Plus, the gender pay gap gets larger after women have children\u2014mothers typically earn less than other women (the \u201cmotherhood penalty\u201d); when men have children, their pay usually increases<\/em>(the \u201cfatherhood bonus\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scarily, it\u2019s about to get much worse in the US, when Trump becomes president again in January. Women have already lost bodily autonomy in several states, and now that Republicans control all three branches of government, there\u2019s no doubt that they will pass a federal ban against abortion\u2014even in cases of rape or the health of the mother. The vice-president-elect, J.D. Vance, has claimed that the country\u2019s dropping birth rate is a \u201ccivilizational crisis\u201d and repeatedly made disparaging comments about women who don\u2019t have children; he has even suggested that Americans without kids should pay higher taxes and have decreased voting rights. The US seems headed in the direction of Russia, where women are now being encouraged to skip college and careers, and instead focus on having lots of children. Russia is on the verge of enacting a law to ban \u201cpropaganda\u201d that discourages having children\u2014including in film, advertising, media, and the Internet. Women in online mothers\u2019 groups are now afraid to discuss any hardships or express ambivalence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> The experience of mothering is deeply ambivalent. It can be difficult to express feelings of guilt, regret, exhaustion, or even the desire not to be a mother. There\u2019s the sense of isolation and the urgent need for “a room of one\u2019s own.” At the same time, there\u2019s the pressure to be multitasking, to perform well in every area from one day to the next. And then there\u2019s the \u201cperfect motherhood\u201d industry\u2014yet another layer of societal expectations for women. This industry often overlooks the fact that there are many different motherhood experiences. Do you share this perspective?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> In the past few years, I\u2019ve been happy to see a profusion of books about just this ambivalence\u2014by authors such as Sheila Heti, Rachel Cusk, Elena Ferrante, Miranda July. The protagonist of Ferrante\u2019s short novel The Lost Daughter<\/em>(2006; English translation, 2008) is a middle-aged professor who, as a younger woman, left her two young daughters (and her husband) to pursue her academic career; three years later, she returned to them. In a conversation with a young mother, the professor describes motherhood as \u201ca shattering.\u201d The young mother recognizes this feeling, and describes having \u201ccertain thoughts you can\u2019t say.\u201d She asks if the feeling ever passes. The professor replies, \u201cToday you can live perfectly well even if it doesn\u2019t pass.\u201d The book was adapted into a terrific film (2021), which brought these themes to a larger audience. But the professor refers to herself as an \u201cunnatural mother\u201d\u2014she\u2019s still understood as somehow abnormal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Book The Lost Daughter <\/em>by Elena Ferrante and cover of the movie based on the book.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Hopefully, as more mothers make work about our experiences\u2014in all their pleasure and pain\u2014these complicated feelings won\u2019t be viewed as unusual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier I mentioned Tala Madani and Camille Henrot. In 2019, Madani started a series called \u201cShit Moms.\u201d The title sounds like it describes women who are \u201cbad mothers,\u201d but the paintings depict mothers actually smeared with shit. The artist has described the series as \u201ca personification of the anxiety, of the imperfections which are at odds with an idealized version of motherhood.\u201d When you become a mother, Madani explains, \u201cYou are constantly negotiating yourself. How much of yourself is left?\u201d The artist has talked about how mothers not only must contend with the struggles of motherhood but also \u201cthe suffocating culture around mothering\u201d (which I take as an allusion to the \u201cperfect motherhood industry\u201d you mention). In addition to making art about motherhood\u2014including paintings of women pumping milk\u2014last year Henrot published a collection of essays on the topic, Milkyways<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Animation part of the work Shit Moms<\/em> by Tala Madani<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>K:<\/mark><\/strong> Given all this, how can we resist? What forms of resistance can we develop to sustain our artistic practices and our work? Praznik suggests that the only way to address these issues is through networks of collaboration and collective action, as this is not a battle that can be fought individually.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/strong><\/mark> We need solidarity. After my experience with MoMA PS1, I quickly discovered that there is no solidarity among women in the art world. I talked with other women who\u2019d had negative experiences with the chief curator, but they didn\u2019t want to speak publicly in order to protect their positions. Numerous female colleagues advised me not to sue because I would be branded a troublemaker and lose out on future work possibilities. Which I did. But I don\u2019t for a minute regret standing up for myself and all women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst experience I had was actually in a group of women museum professionals. It was a sub-group of Time\u2019s Up, a national organization founded in 2018, in the wake of the #metoo movement, to provide legal and media support to women who had experienced workplace gender discrimination or sexual harassment. I was invited to join Time\u2019s Up Museums, and I discovered that all of the members were either curators, directors, or in other highly placed positions. This was a very privileged group of women who had no interest in hearing from museum guards, facilities staff, teaching artists, or any other lower-salaried or precarious workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At my first meeting, I asked the women in attendance if they would publicly support me in my case. I was met by stony silence. They were happy to discuss discrimination as an abstract issue, but no one wanted to stand up to a powerful museum. Later, smaller committees were set up to address specific concerns, which would be hosted by various institutions; unbelievably, a curator at MoMA PS1 signed up to lead the group on discrimination and harassment. This was in the middle of my lawsuit, so it was not only inappropriate, but it meant that I couldn\u2019t attend. Believe me, I could go on with more horror stories about that group. It wasn\u2019t a surprise when the national organization imploded a few years later: It turned out that the women leading Time\u2019s Up had been secretly advising the governor of New York on how to defend himself against multiple allegations of sexual harassment!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also want to acknowledge that I have not always been a good enough ally either. When I heard the allegations against Knight Landesman, one of the publishers of Artforum<\/em>\u2014which quickly turned into a deluge of accusations of sexual harassment\u2014I was shocked. That was in 2017, and I had worked at Artforum<\/em> as an associate editor a decade earlier and stayed in touch with Knight. I felt terrible that younger women at the magazine hadn\u2019t seen me as someone in whom they could confide about their experiences. I realized how important it is for women in more advanced positions to check in with entry-level and junior staff. We have to encourage communication, promote transparency, and help younger women up the career ladder\u2014rather than pulling up the ladder after ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> How can we rethink protection and the balance between work and caregiving, especially considering that at some point, everyone becomes a caregiver (for children, the elderly, or sick relatives)?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> Life-work balance is something that we have to keep fighting for. We have to collectively refuse to work insane hours. Over the past several years, entry- and mid-level employees have successfully unionized at a number of US museums. But the pandemic thrust so much care work back onto women. It\u2019s probably not a coincidence that care has become such a widespread theme in contemporary art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

K:<\/mark> I also like hearing about other artist-mothers, learning how they manage and whether they face the same challenges. Could you share any experiences or personal reflections that might help us feel less alone?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

N:<\/mark><\/strong> I consider myself lucky to have a female partner and live in a two-mother household. We share parenting and household responsibilities much more than the heterosexual couples with children that I know. So, I guess I would have to recommend to other women interested in having children: Get a female partner\u2014or warn your unhelpful husband that you\u2019re going to look for one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artwork by Chilean illustrator Antonieta Corval\u00e1n that reads \u201cmotherhood can be revolutionary\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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I thank Nikki for her time and ideas, which resonate deeply at this moment. I am left reflecting on the urgent need to make visible and defend the labor rights of women, especially mothers and mother-artists. Building care networks, delving into concepts like radical care<\/em>, and rethinking care from a feminist perspective is not just a theoretical exercise, but a necessary action to transform our practices and work environments. May these ideas inspire us to imagine fairer futures shaped by care and affection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“How do we resist as mothers to sustain our artistic practices and continue being workers in the cultural sector?” – This underlying question guides the interview between Katha Eitner (FAK. 1 \u2013 ART IN CONTEXT) and New York-based writer and curator Nikki Columbus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4812,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions\/4812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticaldiversity.udk-berlin.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}