Desperate Artwives Takeover

Following the latest ‘Takeover’ in March 2017, Desperate Artwives are coming back to Leyden Gallery to monopolize the space once again with the theme of Midsummer Madness. They will be staging a ‘takeover’ of the gallery and presenting a curated program of performances and interventions.
Midsummer Madness is an uncertain term evoking and blending divergent sentiments such as pleasure and dejection, fun and chaos. Midsummer itself elicits a kind of madness in us all, where days are long and nights are short and hot. Where images of full ripe fruits come to mind, plump and ready to burst like a woman's pregnant belly. Madness throughout history has gone hand in hand with female identity, from the burning of witches to the locking up in asylums of women who didn't fit the patriarchal prototype. Furthermore motherhood can bring with it ambivalent feelings, happiness, depression, overwhelming pressure and exhaustion, intense love, mind numbing boredom. Motherhood itself plunges you into a kind of madness.

Midsummer Madness with the Desperate Artwives looks to reflect upon and tease out these important and frequently dismissed conversations, giving voice to these concerns with a feminist commitment. Mother Artists will use their experiences as raw materials, blurring boundaries between Art and Activism, presenting alternative approaches of artistic production by focusing on personal experience as a legitimate and valid creative subject matter.