Project description
Artistic resistance: maternity, care and state power
Between the late 1970s and 1990s, Latin American authoritarian regimes and reproductive policies transformed the maternal body into a site of state control. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the MATRICA project will investigate how artists resisted these pressures using dystopian and fragmented imagery to challenge idealised motherhood. Through archival research and interviews, the project will map maternal iconography and its links to reproductive rights and care economies. Key objectives include producing a scholarly monograph and hosting international workshops. By addressing underexplored representations, MATRICA could fill gaps in global art history, strengthen ties between Europe and Latin America, and foster debates on gender equality and reproductive justice, aligning with the Horizon Europe programme.
Objective
This project investigates how the maternal body became a contested and politicised subject in Latin American art between the late 1970s and the 1990s. During this period, authoritarian regimes, reproductive policies, and growing feminist movements turned maternity into a terrain of both state control and cultural resistance. Through case studies from Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and beyond, the project analyses how artists challenged idealised notions of motherhood by deploying dystopian, abject, and fragmented representations.
The objectives are threefold: to map the production and circulation of maternal imagery; to examine how these images mobilised affective registers of horror, monstrosity, and abjection; and to situate them within broader political and social frameworks, including reproductive rights, care economies, and authoritarian control. These goals will be achieved through archival research, semi-structured interviews with artists and scholars, and close visual and critical analysis.
The fellowship combines training in feminist and decolonial methodologies at the University of Buenos Aires with mentoring in transnational art history and dissemination at Sapienza University of Rome. The outcomes include a scholarly monograph, peer-reviewed articles, an international workshop, and public engagement activities across Latin America and Europe.
By addressing the underexplored representation of maternity in Latin American art, the project fills a major gap in global art history, strengthens academic and cultural links between Europe and Latin America, and contributes to urgent societal debates on reproductive justice, gender equality, and cultural memory—objectives that directly support the Horizon Europe Work Programme on research excellence, inclusion, and societal impact.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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00185 Roma
Italy
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