Abstract

This thesis examines caregiving and motherhood as forms of load-bearing infrastructure. Cultural narratives often portray motherhood through sentimental images of joy, tenderness, and devotion, obscuring the structural labor that sustains family life. This project examines maternal labor as a largely unseen system of support that organizes family life while often remaining backgrounded. Caregiving reorganizes time, space, ambition, embodiment, and future orientation within maternal life. Through sculptural works using architectural materials and construction systems, such as oriented strand board, blueprint racks, metal armatures, and graph paper, the project visualizes caregiving as a structural condition. These materials reference the language of architecture and engineering and examine tensions between self-sacrifice and sustaining an interior life within motherhood. Across the exhibition, these structural systems function both materially and metaphorically. When infrastructure operates successfully, it recedes into the background; when it fails, it becomes visible through breakdown. The artworks use architectural infrastructure to frame caregiving as a hidden system that supports and stabilizes everyday life.

Degree

MFA

College and Department

Fine Arts and Communications; Art

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/