Tell Me About Your Mother

Tell Me About Your Mother investigates matrilineal lineage, domesticity and creativity. Intimate and conversational, seven female artist friends and colleagues of mine—mostly boomers—recount their mother’s creative influence upon them. Additionally, each woman discusses the unique way(s) she distinguished herself from her mother. Many of these artists' mothers, including my own, made sacrifices and compromises regarding their own individual talents and ambitions, because they did not have the choices that the feminist movement afforded women of our generation and beyond. 

The featured artists, mostly based in Los Angeles, include: Wendy Clarke, Weba Garretson, Monica Majoli, Renée Petropoulos, Ilene Segalove, Susan Silton, and Jemima Wyman.

When I interviewed these artists in 2011, I was moved by and identified with each woman’s portrayal of her relationship with her mother. In fact, I put the interviews aside and embarked on a large-scale interdisciplinary project about my own mother’s creative impact on me. That project, comprised of a film, Mom’s Move (2018) and two distinct installations, engaged me for a decade. In October 2023, I went back to the interviews and was as captivated as I had originally been and completed Tell Me About Your Mother in 2024.

— Susan Mogul