Held at Once
This installation examines how motherhood reshapes experiences of time, productivity, and value within systems structured around efficiency. Becoming a mother did not interrupt my professional practice; it intensified it. Yet in professional and creative contexts, maternal labor often remains unspoken or rendered invisible.
Working across graphic design, data, and speculative objects, I use the language of measurement to question what cannot be measured. The project draws from periods of extreme multitasking, raising children while working and beginning my MFA, to foreground care, presence, and emotional labor as forms of work that resist quantification.
In the first space, I appropriate the visual language of the Wall Street ticker. Rather than circulating numbers or profit, the marquee displays a sentence, refusing conversion into measurable value. A daily log, collected during a period of overlapping labor, records data not as a tool for optimization but as evidence of the inadequacy of efficiency-driven systems to account for care.
The second space introduces a speculative hourglass with three throats, proposing a model of time that splits and overlaps rather than moves linearly. Accompanying this object is a soft manifesto for working mothers, an intentionally non-directive text that resists urgency. Softness operates here as a feminist strategy, reframing endurance, attention, and care as strength rather than deficit.
Through this work, I position motherhood not as an exception to professional practice, but as a critical lens through which systems of value, time, and labor can be reimagined.
Exhibition show: "A Simultaneity Mark", January 2026, Mason Gross Galleries, New Brunswick, NJ
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A manifesto for working mothers
The moment you hold your child, everything changes.
Not gradually. Not gently.
Something shifts all at once.
Not gradually. Not gently.
Something shifts all at once.
You are no longer singular. Your time fractures.
Your thoughts multiply.
Your body becomes a site of care, vigilance, and endurance. Freedom does not disappear, but it is forever reconfigured. Every decision now echoes beyond yourself.
Your thoughts multiply.
Your body becomes a site of care, vigilance, and endurance. Freedom does not disappear, but it is forever reconfigured. Every decision now echoes beyond yourself.
And still, we dream.
To work.
To study.
To make.
To think deeply and
claim space in the world.
To study.
To make.
To think deeply and
claim space in the world.
For working mothers, ambition is never solitary.
It is negotiated daily, across school schedules and deadlines,
exhaustion and hope, care and creation.
Our labor expands to fill every hour, including the ones that are never counted.
It is negotiated daily, across school schedules and deadlines,
exhaustion and hope, care and creation.
Our labor expands to fill every hour, including the ones that are never counted.
We sleep less.
We carry more.
We decide under pressure
that others never see.
We carry more.
We decide under pressure
that others never see.
And yet, we persist.
Because our work matters.
Not only professionally, but generationally.
Our children watch us labor, visibly and invisibly.
They learn that learning does not end with motherhood.
That care and intellect are not opposites.
That growth is not selfish.
Not only professionally, but generationally.
Our children watch us labor, visibly and invisibly.
They learn that learning does not end with motherhood.
That care and intellect are not opposites.
That growth is not selfish.
Much of what we do cannot be easily named.
The thinking ahead.
The constant monitoring.
The emotional accounting.
The quiet worry that runs in the background of everything.
The thinking ahead.
The constant monitoring.
The emotional accounting.
The quiet worry that runs in the background of everything.
These acts appear small. Repetitive. Trivial.
They are not.
They are not.
They are the structure of a life.
This manifesto exists to name what has long been ignored:
Motherhood is work.
Care is labor.
Time spent sustaining others is not empty time.
Motherhood is work.
Care is labor.
Time spent sustaining others is not empty time.
To all working mothers: your hours matter.
Your exhaustion is evidence.
Your ambition is not a betrayal.
You are allowed to pursue your greatest dreams.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to want more.
Your exhaustion is evidence.
Your ambition is not a betrayal.
You are allowed to pursue your greatest dreams.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to want more.
In doing so, you model a future where love and labor are not hidden,
where invisible work is finally seen,
and where motherhood is not an end, but a powerful beginning.
where invisible work is finally seen,
and where motherhood is not an end, but a powerful beginning.
