Mirthe Berentsen Lucy Wilke Sahar Rahimi

Monsters and Mothers

Crip and other imaginations on family, motherhood and care

conversations

What if our ideas of family carry not only love and care, but also expectations about what is considered normal, desirable or possible?

What if monsters, broken bodies and other forms of kinship could help us imagine care differently?

In this afternoon programme, writer, artist and policy advisor Mirthe Berentsen opens up a conversation with artists Lucy Wilke and Sahar Rahimi. Bringing them together in one programme for the first time, the afternoon creates a much-anticipated encounter between three artists who are eager to exchange questions, fascinations and perspectives. 

What connects them is a shared interest in horror, monsters, posthumanist scenarios and the ways disability can shift how we think about bodies, care, language and family.

Through an introduction by Berentsen, fragments from her writing and artistic projects, and an exchange with Wilke, Rahimi and the audience, the programme looks at motherhood, the nuclear family and the female body from unexpected angles. Rather than treating family as something fixed or self-evident, Monsters and Mothers invites us to consider other ways of living together, caring for one another and imagining kinship.

The afternoon will unfold in an open and comfortable setting, with space for conversation, reflection and shared thought.

• Mirthe Berentsen is a writer, artist and policy advisor from the Netherlands. She has a background in literature, linguistics and politics. Her progressive deafness functions as a lens through which she explores the relationship between language, care and accessibility.

In her new book with publisher Das Mag, she explores how the traditional family is often based on a norm: an idea of what a “good” or “normal” family is. She shows how people or bodies that differ from that norm are often seen as a problem. Through themes such as the vulnerable body, motherhood, monsters, eugenics, cyborgs and the disappearance of sign language, she questions that norm. According to her, the nuclear family sometimes works in the same way as ableism: it defines what is normal, sees difference as something negative and expects people to adapt.

In her long-term art project Beyond the Nuclear Family, she travels with a covered wagon to enter into conversation about fixed ideas around family and kinship. At the moment, she is working on a book with artist Christine Sun Kim about motherhood and language, published by “ ” in collaboration with NERO Books. She is also working on Sandplay, an ongoing participatory installation, in collaboration with Martín La Roche. Her visual and written work has previously been shown and published by, among others, Amsterdam Museum, Providence Galleries, Mister Motley, NRC Handelsblad, Fotomuseum Den Haag, Art Basel and Voices of Contemporary Art.

• Lucy Wilke is an award-winning actress, singer, and dancer based in Munich. A permanent ensemble member of the Münchner Kammerspiele since 2020, she is known for her visionary, body-positive performances. Her work, including the acclaimed Scores that shaped our Friendship, earned her the prestigious Der Faust award and an invitation to the Berliner Theatertreffen. She also tours Europe with her band, blind and lame.

• Sahar Rahimi, (°1981, Tehran, Iran) is a director, author, performance artist and curator. Her work straddles the boundaries between theatre, performance, installation, and video. She studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and is co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck which received the prestigious Tabori Prize for its entire oeuvre. As a solo artist, Sahar Rahimi has staged several productions at venues across Europe. Together with Mark Schröppel she is artistic director of Brechtfestival Augsburg.