How We Did Stages of Womanhood
Stages of Womanhood, March 2025, San Diego, CA
At this controversial time, it felt as important as ever to create this show. It also felt important to send the right message without mixing it up with the political mess. With women’s experiences being a subject of arguments and manipulations these days, we wanted to bring the humanity of these experiences to the surface. The most important point in any of those arguments is to not forget that they are human experiences first and foremost. They are real, tough, emotional, and diverse. They are hard to empathize with for those who haven’t experienced them first-hand, but they are common.
The three of us are female artists of the same generation. Our backgrounds are different; our past experiences don’t match; our relationships with our parents and our views on parenthood vary, and yet there’s something common in our untold truths and unseen feelings. There are only three of us in this show, and there are millions of us in the world.
We had a blast seeing how many people came to celebrate the opening of our show and how many people came on its closing day; we loved all the comments and questions we got and all the fun we saw people braving into interacting with the exhibits.
Our wish is to tap into this little reminder every year, making it a little deeper and funner each time. We are manifesting The Stages Of Womanhood to become an annual celebration of female experiences in the entirety of their diversity.
Stages of Womanhood showcases three distinct artistic voices, weaving deeply personal stories that illuminate the universal themes of femininity, motherhood, and self-discovery.
Artist statement
Transition To Motherhood
Watercolor’s fluid, unpredictable nature mirrors the upheaval I felt, while its softness adds depth to the raw emotions I aim to convey. I deliberately exaggerated colors and embraced a cartoonish, sketch-like style to unpack the madness and uncertainty of this transformative time. These wonky, imperfect depictions challenge the sanitized, idealized imagery often associated with motherhood. Instead, they reveal its unvarnished truths—messy, strange, and full of contradictions.
By leaning into irony and humor, I offer both myself and my audience a coping mechanism, a way to process the wild unpredictability of becoming a parent. Avoiding the weight of a hyper-realistic style allowed me to create space for vulnerability and levity, reflecting the resilience required to navigate such a profound life transition.
This series isn’t about celebrating perfection; it’s about embracing the unpretty, the unexpected, and the beautifully human reality of motherhood.
Milagro (Ex-Voto)
This work, inspired by the ex-voto tradition, serves as both a deeply personal altar and a testament to the layered realities of motherhood—its blessings, its trials, and its profound transformation.
The foundation of this piece is a plaster cast of my pregnant belly, a physical representation of the life I carried after years of longing and struggle. For more than a decade, I endured countless medical tests and procedures, alongside the heartache of unrealized dreams. The weight of these experiences strained my first marriage and left me questioning my own body’s capabilities. At 38, after a course of acupuncture and renewed hope, I was finally blessed with a healthy pregnancy and the birth of my son—a joyful arrival that fulfilled years of longing.
And yet, even a long-awaited blessing carries complexity. Pregnancy and motherhood are not just experiences of joy and fulfillment; they are physically grueling and emotionally overwhelming in ways that defy the idealized images so often associated with them. Through this work, I reflect on the contradictions of this journey—how a moment can hold both gratitude and exhaustion, elation and uncertainty, love and loss of self.
The cast is embellished with objects that tell this layered story. Symbols of my pregnancy experience mix with playful mementos from my 2-year-old son’s world: toy cars, dinosaurs, and fragments of his wonder. Small “windows” embedded in the piece allow viewers to glimpse what lies within—ultrasound images and other hidden artifacts that speak to the unseen aspects of this transformative time.
This work challenges the sanitized depictions of motherhood by honoring its rawness and humanity. Like traditional ex-voto offerings, it is a symbol of hope and gratitude, but it is also an acknowledgment of the resilience, vulnerability, and contradictions required to navigate this life-altering experience. It asks the viewer to consider the unvarnished truth: that even in joy, there can be struggle, and even in struggle, there is beauty.
