This artist book is a multi-media exploration of the layered, complex, and often unspoken journey of becoming a mother. Told through visual media and reflective text, it serves as a personal archive and a meditation on identity, time, and transformation.
Utilizing mixed-media techniques, I created a tactile timeline of my transition into motherhood. The book’s form—a hardcover double accordion structure interspersed with pamphlet inserts—mirrors the intertwined timelines of my life and my daughter’s, unfolding and folding into one another.
Drawing from lived experience, this work traces the stages of pregnancy, postpartum, and new motherhood while grappling with the emotional, physical, and spiritual shifts accompanying them. Through the process of making, I’ve come to recognize that the self I was before motherhood is not lost, but layered into who I am now—each version coexisting in a continuum of becoming.
This book also responds to visual histories of motherhood often shaped by artists without lived maternal experience and societal notions that distort the maternal identity. In contrast, my work offers an embodied perspective grounded in truth.
Creating this book has been an act of healing, reflection, and discovery—revealing how deeply motherhood continues to shape how I see, create, and live.
