UPCOMING EXHIBITION: Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre 

Jennifer Long: Mended Leaves
October 4 -26, 2024

Mended Leaves is a photographic series that references the impact of the Covid pandemic on caring for others, and the subsequent process of repair and renewal. Through large-scale images of hybrid botanicals which the artist created, she considers quiet moments and rituals of everyday life. 

Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre Inc. is a non-profit cultural centre for the connections between art and nature located in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick.

Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 4 pm
Wheelchair accessible and chair lift to the second-floor studios
Free Admission

Mended Leaves was included in The Body Electric  - a digital presentation featured at the International Conference on Residency Education, October 19-21, 2023 in Halifax, NS.

The projected showcase of imagery, curated by Dr. Allison Crawford and Dr. Lisa Richardson, includes art in a range of media, including photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, and film. The Body Electric understands art as an intervention that explores, disrupts, deepens and reimagines medicine. It offers a set of practices for meaning-making, looking, and reflecting, through which we can stand in new relations with the subjects and objects of health care.

This project is supported by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC)



Thank you Ontario Arts Council, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and Varley Art Gallery for supporting the Caesura installation at Thames Art Gallery.

SATURDAY, MAY 6TH, 10am EST

Pleased to be participating on behalf of Feminist Photography NetworkI am (with) HER Kind: Feminisms in Collective Practice

Moderated by Yang Li - Hosted by alpha nova and galerie futura - With: CAO CollectiveCOVEN BERLINfem_arcFeminist Photography NetworkMiroir Project

zoom link: 
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86193704770
Meeting-ID: 861 9370 4770

What does working collectively mean for feminist activists, artists, photographers, and architects when they come together in an alliance? Why is collaboration indispensable for comprehending and practicing feminist strategies in the midst of societal contexts in flux? Where are the boundaries between acting independently and collectively? What are the ongoing challenges faced by collectives in various creative areas? What roles do concepts such as care and inclusion play in their practices? Taking inspiration from Anne Sexton's poetic line, I have been her kind, this online round-table seeks to explore the intrinsic connections among women from creative fields, regardless of nationality, background, or profession, and regardless of the type of feminisms they identify with. The goal is to discuss the multifaceted understandings of  being collective as a feminist strategy, and to encourage cross- disciplinary exchange and international inspiration among five collectives and the wider community.

Tether

Thames Art Gallery
April 6 - June 4, 2023
Reception: April 14, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

The often invisible work of caregiving is constant and undervalued. Tether explores narratives of motherhood and correlated themes, including artwork by April Hickox, Natasha Lan, Jennifer Long, Kelly O’Brien, Theola Ross, Arpita Shah, and Jessica Wohl. This group brings together parents of toddlers, children with disabilities, and school-aged youth, who have actively explored their personal experiences of being or becoming a parent within their practice. From sewing to film-making and photography, this collection of artworks ranges from works produced three decades ago to the current moment. Interweaving themes relating to the experience of time, visibility, intimacy and memory, these artists examine their relationships with parenting and their larger connection to the world in which we live.

Image: Untitled, from Caesura series, 2018-ongoing


Pleased to be part of the online exhibition

Identity • Connection • Place

Site Launches on March 8th 2023
www.fpnexhibit.com

Funded by Canada Council for the Arts, the Feminist Photography Network web exhibition Identity • Connection • Place showcases work by sixteen artists from Canada and the UK who participated in the online peer-to-peer residencies FPN ran in 2017, 2020, and 2021. Identity, Connection and Place were themes weaving through these artists’ work and experiences of the residency itself. 

Feminist Photography Network is a shifting collective based in Tkaronto (Toronto), co-directed by me and Clare Samuel. Our projects emphasize support and connection between artists rather than competition. FPN’s mandate is to promote the careers of women-identified and non-binary photographers, as well as research and reflection on the relationship between gender and lens-based media.

Identity • Connection • Place launches on 8th March 2023 (International Women’s Day), with the Identity section, and the Connection and Place sections will go live on consecutive weeks.

An on-site exhibition will run concurrently in the vitrines at A Space Gallery in Tkaronto (Toronto), and a selection of images will play on a slideshow outside Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. The site includes seven commissioned texts and three live online events.

Identity • Connection • Place web design by Una Janićijević 

Image: Untitled, from Caesura series, 2018-ongoing

The Winter 2022/23 Botanicals issue of  PhotoEd Magazine, curated by Peppa Martin, includes a selection of my Mended Leaves pieces. 

PLEASED TO BE PRESENTING AT THE UPCOMING VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: Learning from the Pandemic: Possibilities and Challenges for Mothers and their Families

May 5-7, 2022 hosted by  York University, Demeter Press, & Mothers Matter Centre.

PANEL: Creating Space: Artist-Mothers & Community
Lara BozabalianNatasha LanJennifer Long

For mother-artists, making time for a creative practice is habitually challenging. It is an active pursuit, often requiring determination, enforced boundaries, and, ultimately, finding time when there is none. During the COVID-19 pandemic, increased workloads involving childcare and online schooling have fallen disproportionately upon mothers. These demands taxed womyn caregivers in all fields, many of whom were already spread thin, between their life/work responsibilities. It has caused daily intermittent barriers, juggling multiple roles in tandem.

This panel discussion will reflect on how three mother-artists and arts workers carved out space to engage in their artistic pursuits, amidst the many stressors and responsibilities of daily life exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of further cultivating community within these endeavors. The speakers will share how their experiences have been positively impacted by cultivating womxn centred support systems and dialogue on possible futures. The mother-artists will discuss avenues to create and sustain intersectional, intergenerational communities that strive to open lines of communication and support for all members of the community.

Gathering | Tethering Virtual Conversation Series: Jennifer Long


Thurs, Dec 9th, 2:00 EST - In tandem with Klondike Institute of Art & Culture exhibition Gathering | Tethering, Ursula Handleigh and Anna Heywood-Jones are facilitating a series of dialogues with invited guests on the intersection of art and grief. In the space of shared experience, this collection of conversations seeks to explore varied perspectives on the process of creating during periods of loss. Event Registration through Eventbrite

Image: Untitled, from Caesura series, 2018-ongoing

LiisBeth: State of the Art: Making Room and Income for Women in Art

Meet six incredible feminist art equity and gender justice activists who are reimagining the art market.        

Thank you to Sue Nador for speaking with me about the work we are doing at Feminist Photography Network!




Image: Portrait of Jennifer Long by Tobi Asmoucha

The Mothers: Life in Lockdown

I'm pleased to be part of the newly launched archive produced by photographer Rebecca Lupton

During the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 it became apparent that parents, and mothers in particular, were facing unique and unfamiliar challenges. 

With lockdown restrictions in place, and unable to run ‘The Mothers’ in its previous form, the project temporarily adapted. Running as a participatory art project where mothers were encouraged to document their experiences of motherhood, in lockdown, from their own homes. 

The Mothers Project ran artist talks, set mini-projects, held one-to-one mentoring sessions, and offered support and guidance the women involved in the project. Participants took on the role of ‘artist/mother’ and spent the next 6 months gathering images, words and artworks that illustrate their time in lockdown.

You can view the work in progress from the socially-engaged, participatory project here – an online sketchbook – which shows their creative explorations as they experienced life in lockdown. 

After the socially-engaged art project ended, mothers from all over the world were invited to contribute to this archive of experiences. Through social media women tagged they their contributions #motherslifeinlockdown. This archive still continues to grow

Women's Island Residency

In October 2021 I had the pleasure of spending time Artscape Gibraltar Point as part of the Women's Island Residency. Founder April Hickox created this intergenerational retreat for lens-based artists to create work and build community. 


Left: Women's Island Residency Founder, April Hickox
Right: My studio at Artscape Gibraltar Point

My participation in this event was supported by funding by Canada Council for the Arts & Toronto Arts Council.

Pleased to be part of
Maternochronics

noun 

1. genre defined by the chronic, durational fatigue of mothering/caregiving

2. framework that explores an alternate way of experiencing time through the lens of mothering

This exhibition asks the question: What does maternal exhaustion look/feel like?— as experienced during the ongoing pandemic march 2020-2021. The above term— maternochronics —is offered in an attempt to create space for a conversation about maternal time and the accumulation of stress. 

Exhibition Organizer: Emily Zarse (she/her/hers)

ME, WE, WOMEN  Interview

Thank you to curator LI Yang for giving me the opportunity to reflect on my past and current work.  Click on the image credits of each work to view the interview. This profile will be available until June 12, 2021 at the Museum of Motherhood.

100 Visions of Motherhood

Honoured to have work from the Imminent series included in The Luupe's current curation - A collection of photographs and words celebrating the complexities of motherhood

Motherhood is complicated. It’s filled with love, joy, struggle, beauty, and sorrow. To celebrate these many layers, we invited photographers from around the world to share images that represent its many possibilities. Becoming a mother, being a child, the struggle to conceive, the exhilaration of birth, the delight in watching them grow, and the drive to protect them.

The complexities and nuances, and even the decision not to become a mother, and the fear and inevitable loss that comes with all of this. And then – the pandemic. These 100 images represent a global and intergenerational take on motherhood’s many forms.

ME, WE, WOMEN  

CONTEMPORARY GAZE AT FEMINIST ART
MUSEUM OF MOTHERHOOD
MARCH  29 -JUNE 13, 2021

A contemporary gaze into feminist art is both subjective and objective, either from female artists or social collective lenses. Lucy R. Lippard stated in 1980 that feminist art was ‘neither a style nor a movement but instead a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life.” Staring with “ME” (the individual), and “WE” (the community), to “WOMEN” (the entire female as half the population), a sequential contemplation focusing on various perspectives and creativities from female artists worldwide is highlighted. Eleven female artists from different nations and cultural backgrounds bring us the reflection of how contemporary feminist art shapes life and art from diverse angles yet to reach a pluralistic interconnection. This project is a part of the MOM Internship Program with Li Yang.


MOTHERS, MOTHERING, AND COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic

 is now available for purchase through  www.demeterpress.org.

Founded in 2006, Demeter is an independent feminist press committed to publishing peer-reviewed scholarly work, fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction on mothering, reproduction, sexuality and family. Demeter is partnered with the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI). The press is named in honour of the Goddess Demeter, herstory’s most celebrated empowered and outraged mother.


Editors Andrea O'Reilly & Fiona Joy Green

ISBN: 978-1-77258-343-4

Page count 550

$49.95 CDN


Above Right: Jennifer Long, Observations from Isolation: Day 60 (Mirroring)Caesura series, 2020, created with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council & Toronto Arts Council

BLACKFLASH MAGAZINE

In celebration of International Women's Day, She & Her & Me, curated by Clare Samuel,  is now available online at BlackFlash Magazine.


Featuring the work of Arpita Shah, Clea Christakos-Gee, Jennifer Long, and Margaret Mitchell, this collection of images reflects some of the strange pain and beauty of being raised and moving through this world in bodies designated “female.”







Left: Untitled, Caesura Series, 2020 (Observations from Isolation, Day 5)

PREORDERS AVAILABLE: Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic

The proofing is completed and Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic is now at the printers! Check out what editors Andrea O'Reilly and Fiona Joy Green have created for Demeter Press!

This collection of 45 chapters and with 70 contributors is the first to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers’ care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective and from the standpoint of single, partnered, queer, racialized, Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled, and birthing mothers, the volume examines the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, elder care, and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers’ employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care and wage labour under COVID-19. By way of creative art, poetry, photography and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Preorder through www.demeterpress.org 

Price: $49.95


Right: Selected spread Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic , featuring imagery from the Caesura series, created with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council & Toronto Arts Council

DON'T SMILE

Delighted to have work included in Don't Smile's current online exhibition and upcoming publication.   Did That Just Happen? features artwork made in 2020 by 60 women around the globe. Don't Smile is a space devoted to showcasing photography by women artists.




Observations from Isolation, Day 173, 2020, from the Caesura series, created with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council & Toronto Arts Council

CAESURA SERIES INCLUDED IN:

BlackFlash Magazine, Winter 2021  - Issue 37.3 
She & Her & Me

Curated by: Clare Samuel, Artwork by: Arpita Shah, Clea Christakos-Gee, Jennifer Long, Margaret Mitchell

BlackFlash Magazine is a platform for contemporary visual art. BlackFlash is dedicated to presenting critical opinions, urgent issues, and innovative ideas about divergent artistic practices from across Canada, the United States and beyond. Each issue includes profiles, interviews, reviews, feature articles, and artist projects from a diverse selection of artists, writers, and curators. BlackFlash fosters a rich public engagement with image-based practices, such as photography, video, sound, performance and social practice by promoting energetic debate and showcasing diverse voices and communities (local, regional, national and international).

CANADA COVID PORTRAIT

A portrait from Caesura is included in Portraits in COVID Time:Documenting a Nation in Change, at Harbourfront Centre.  This outdoor installation was created by the team at Canada COVID Portrait and will run from November 23, 2020 to September 2021!

From Canada COVID Portrait: Since April 2020, we have received more than 5000 photographs from across the country documenting this pandemic time. The images featured in this exhibition, titled ‘Portraits in COVID Time: Documenting a Nation in Change’, show how Canadians are living through this transformative period in history. The exhibition touches on all aspects of our changed lives – family, work, leisure, sports, culture, religion, celebrations, health, transportation and political engagement. Each photograph speaks to the ingenuity, kindness, grief, humour, hope and creativity that have emerged from our shared pandemic experience.

Left: Installation View, Portraits in COVID Time: Documenting a Nation in Change, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, CA
Right: Untitled, from Caesura, 2020, created with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council & Toronto Arts Council


Mothers' Days Chorus

Honoured to have my experience included in Lenka Clayton’s Mothers’ Days Chorus. The artwork is on display until March 2021 as part of Upkeep, Everyday Strategies of Care at the Arts Club of Chicago.

Mothers’ Days Chorus -  Audio / 2h48m / 2020
Recorded over the telephone during the global pandemic, 14 women from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, England, Germany, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Serbia, Spain and across the US read their 'Mothers’ Days' accounts, one year after first writing them.

The voices are edited together in chronological order, creating a collective chorus of the invisible details of an ordinary Monday, broadcast throughout the gallery.

Readers: Fi Bailey, Joie Chan, Magdalena Edwards, Jelena Grujičić, Katie, Jennifer Long, Rachel McDonnell, Rachel Moodie, Catherine Mueller, Agnieszka Olszewska, Candace Jane Opper, Sofía Roncero, Carly Schmitt and Jenny Weir.

Left:  Arts Club of Chicago installation view
Right: Selection of my reading

Thank you Toronto Arts Council

The Caesura series has been selected for a 2020 Level Two, Visual Artist Grant through the Toronto Arts Council.

The funds from this grant will support the next stage of development for Caesura. Using large format, digital and instant photography, I will combine portraits, still lives, and photos from my archive to produce sequenced pieces and individual images. By bringing these components together, I’m interested in creating a hybrid-memory, one that recreates elements of my past, while  concurrently capturing the moments that unfold before me as a mother. The ambiguous narratives created will omit  the build up and undoing of the moments shown and be as fragmented as memory. I  see these as ordinary and fleeting scenes, brought together to reflect on  intergenerational experience, the meaning of history, and familial understanding.  At the forefront of this project is the need to make space for my ever-changing outlook of being a  mother and an artist. 

Thank you Canada Council for the Arts 

Caesura has been selected for 2020-2021 Research and Creation support from Canada Council for the Arts.  

From the Latin word to describe a pause or break within a poetic verse, Caesura examines the complicated framework of the mother-daughter relationship and its connection to memory. Through the process of raising two young girls, I catch glimpses of my own girlhood mirrored back at me through their actions. Moved by the quality of light, a texture or situation, I am at once transported back to specific moments in time. These “recalls” lead me to question the veracity of what I remember. This is complicated by the past meeting the present as my memories are reflected in my daughters’ gestures and actions. As an artist I bare witness to the mother-daughter relationship as it evolves, one that has moved from complete dependence on me as a mother to this newer semi-autonomous state of being. There is a pause in the middle of the line and that line is flowing from me through to my daughters. At a certain point my children will no longer be attached to me in the same way that they were when they were younger.The pause is growing longer and Caesura is a way to explore these inevitable changes and the texture of the time within them. While I gather observations of every day life, I have come to recognize that quotidian moments hold pivotal revelations – ones that deserve to be fixed into a record of this period in my life. 

Selections from Caesura included in  HOME-WORKS, Artists / Mothers in Quarantine 

Designed to mimic a school homework jotter, the Home-works Zine brings together the work of 33 Spilt Milk artists produced during the first months of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Located on different parts of the globe with varying degrees of ‘Stay at Home’ orders, these artists were united in quarantine. They were united in capturing this unique moment of time through the lens of an artist and mother during a global crisis.

Home-works brings forth these reflections and questions; in this new world order which has legitimised working from home, will the work of mothers finally be recognised?

The zine is a gorgeous 40 pages printed on bright white 90gm newsprint, measuring 25cm x 17cm and limited to 300 copies.

Profits from the zine will go toward Spilt Milk's 2021 exhibition programme supporting artist/mothers and for every copy sold, £1 will be invested into our childcare fund!

Featured Artists: Emily Zarse, Jennifer Long, Jennifer Georgescu, Isabelle Zumbrink, Olivia de Fleuriot Perry, Anna Grevenitis, Suzanne Schireson, F. Maria Velasco, Megan Driving Hawk, Rebecca Livesy-Wright, Martha Orbach, Crystal Ann Brown, Catherine Reinhart, Lee Nowell-Wilson, Guadalupe Aldrete, Victoria Smits, Lauren McLaughlin, Lynsey Watson, Gina Lundy, Sarah Irvin, Carole Loeffler, Sarah Dolan, Dawn Yow, Emi Avora, Josie McCoy, Kasey Jones, Nuala Herron, KimyiBo, Lisa Evans, Brooke Bowen, Rebecca Potts, Jill Skulina, Lisa Alberts.

OpenWalls Arles & Birth Rights Collection

Untitled, 2013 (Nobby) from Imminent  has been selected for exhibition at OpenWalls Arles and will be on display at Galerie Huit Arles from June 26th to September 5th, 2020.  This image has also been shortlisted for the Birth Rites Biennial Competition for New Works: 2020.  The artwork will be premiered on Thursday 9th July at 7.30pm (British Summer Time) alongside 14 other artists' work during the Birth Rites Collection Summer School as an open online screening, free to attend via ZOOM and VIMEO.   For more details visit www.birthritescollection.org.uk

The Imminent series was created with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.


Artist Parent Index

So pleased to have my work alongside so many amazing artists, publications, exhibitions and resources:

The Artist Parent Index collects information related to the visual art discourse around reproduction and parenting and organizes the details in an online searchable database. The site is a research tool for students, artists, educators, curators, and the general public.

As a repository for knowledge about the variety of art and curatorial practices pursuing these topics, the Index provides a platform for subject matter that has been historically marginalized within the canon of art history. By connecting the general public directly to the artists on the site and providing research support for exhibits and publications, the project increases public understandings of the subjective experiences surrounding reproduction and raising children.

Founder: Sara Irvin
Contributing Researcher: Sarah Dolan

MOTHERS' DAY

My writing has been included in ‘Mothers’ Days’, a project by Lenka Clayton @lenkaclaytonstudio.  This publication composes the accounts of 82 artist mothers on what unfolded in their day on July 15, 2019.  The book will be debuted in Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020’the inaugural exhibition of the new University Art  Museum at New Mexico State University. It will open on February 28, 2020 and remain on view until May 28, 2020. 

Mothers’ Days / photo: Phillip Andrew Lewis / design Brett Yasko / project by Lenka Clayton / texts by Agnieszka, Aldrete, Guadalupe, Anonymous, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh, Amy Beeston, Araidia Blackburn, Elena Blythe, Brittany Bond, Joanna Bond, Bonnie, Susan Bradley Smith, Luisa Callegari, Catherine, Joie Chan, Mya Cluff, Danka, Jessica Delfino, Sarah Dolan, Jen Donnery, Magdalena Edwards, Stephanie Edwards, Grace, Meagan Grant, Jelena Grujičić, Ariel Hall, Nicole Haroutunian, Heather, Helen, Corrie Hosking, Rachel Johnston, Janie Julien-Fort, Sarah Kain Gutowski, Katie, Rachel Kerwin, Jessica Kneipp, Lauren, Robyn LeRoy-Evans, Lisa, Lisa, Jennifer Long, Patti Maciesz, Rachel Maggart, Taylor Mardis Katz, Chloë Marsden, Jennifer McCandless, Rachel McDonnell, Sara McNeilly Ammon, Amanda Mehl West, Rachel Moodie, Jessica Mueller, Dr. Emily O’Hara, Candace Jane Opper, Jenny Pritchett, Ramona, Georgina Reskala, Rita, Sofía Roncero, Rosalie, Sally, Sarah, Hanna Schaer, Carly Schmitt, Laurie Schram, Bérénice Staiger, Donna Szoke, Alyson Thomas, Corrie Thompson, Jenny Weir, Caprice White, Amanda Wood, Shiori Yajima.

Members Q & A

Thanks to Lauren McLaughlin at Spilt Milk for the Q & A blog post. It was a lovely chance reflect on my process and community.


Gallery One, St Margarets House, Edinburgh

Selections from Caesura will be on exhibition as part of re: birth: Spilt Milk Members Show, curated by Lauren McLaughlin September 28 - October 13, 2019. Spilt Milk is an artist-lead social enterprise based in Scotland whose mission is to promote the work of artists who are mothers.


Flow Photo Festival, Inverness

A selection from the Imminent series will be on display at Highland Print Studio, Inverness, Scotland as part of FLOW Photofest. FLOW Photofest is an international festival celebrating photography in all its forms held biennially across the north of Scotland. The festival will launch in Inverness and the North of Scotland in September 2019 and will comprise exhibitions, talks, films and workshops on the theme of BORDERS.


PhotoPlace Gallery, Vermont

Work from Caesura, selected by HuffPost Photo Director Christy Havranek, is on display at PhotoPlace Gallery's . The Being Human exhibition runs August 15 to September 7, 2019.


Thank you Ontario Arts Council!

I’m pleased to announce that I have received a Mid-Career, Visual Artists Creation Project Grant from the Ontario Arts Council to develop Caesura.

Caesura (a Latin word to describe a pause or break within a poetic verse) examines the dichotomy between the mirroring and the assertion of self that I witness between my daughters and myself. As my children move through girlhood, I see their social development evolve through their interactions with one another, peers and adults. I am intrigued by the subtle details in these casual exchanges: the awkward pauses, the self-conscious yet self-aware body language, and an indifference to personal space. Inspired by observations of childhood growth, Caesura will create dialogue on topics of autonomy, intergenerational experience, and intimacy.

Using Format