(M)otherload an audio/visual installation created by artist collaborators Kristyna Balaban and Catherine Mellinger.
(M)otherload transforms the intangible invisible mental load experienced by “mothers” and creates it into a tangible experience.
Set within a geodesic dome structure, the public will engage with a 360 degree four-minute film experience of the invisible mental load of “motherhood” - the never-ending to-do list, the bombardment of responsibilities, and the ceaseless stream of thoughts encompassing anticipation, organization, and management.
Artists
Together, we draw inspiration from the femmage movement, female artists of the Dada period, Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro’s “Womanhouse” installation, as well as Czech surrealists artists Jan Švankmajer and Věra Chytilová, as well as immersive multidisciplinary artists like Ryoji Ikeda.
Kristyna Balaban is an inter-disciplinary, media and installation artist. After 12 years in Prague, Kristyna, her partner, and children are newcomers to Kitchener-Waterloo. Raised in a dissident Czech community in North America and the Czech Republic, she began her journey into the arts in the underground arts scene of electronic music festivals, alternative spaces, squatting, and DIY culture. Activism is entwined with her work—collaborative, accessible, community-rooted projects remain central to her practice. Kristyna’s experience with emotional exhaustion and depression from immigration and relocating her family led to her interest in the connection between the mental load and broader societal factors tied to identity and experience.
Kristyna brings a background in new media art and documentary filmmaking, exploring the intersection of art, new technologies and storytelling. She creates multi-media installation as part of the collaborative Zem Vision, whose recent work Tree Love has been exhibited at Lumen 2024.
Catherine Mellinger is a franco/anglo mixed media, installation, inter-arts and artist, community embedded arts facilitator and Expressive Arts Therapist. She is a first generation settler to Turtle Island. She has particular interest in exploring themes of identity as an interplay between the person (self-identification) and the societal (identities imposed upon us). This interest extends to exploring ownership of self as a play space between a body that is their own, but also belonging in part to her children. She is a birthing parent of two children with disabilities, and identifies as living with invisible disabilities.
Catherine’s previous inter-arts collaboration with Pazit Cahlon, Nat Janin and Adam Harendorf, Post-Part project, has been exhibited at Rendezvous with Madness, Come Up to My Room, and was an exhibiting partner in CAFKA’21 in partnership with the City of Kitchener. She has had her works exhibited Turtle Island, and published internationally.