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Mothers of Ultra

Miao & ChaoCoop

Opening: 7.12.20, 14:00

Mothers of Ultra is the title of a new video and fashion collection produced by visual artist and fashion designer Miao in collaboration with ChaoCoop based in Jieyang, China. The pieces are presented as a frontal window installation at SYNNIKA in Frankfurt/Main as well as on www.synnika.space

SYNNIKA started working with Miao during the Launch of a Soeng Joeng Toi (SJT) in Frankfurt/Main in August 2019. At that time she was pregnant and working in Guangzhou, mainly with textile and video at the SJT community space in collaboration with other artists and friends. Her contribution to the SJT project at SYNNIKA was a video installation and Blind Date invitation searching for someone to marry her. The marriage ought to protect the becoming single-mother from the Chinese law that would demand from her to return to the region where she was born. Miao gave birth to her daughter Ah Chao (English: "Ultra") in December 2019 after she got married to herself and to her friends, celebrating a phenomenal wedding in Guangzhou. Before giving birth Miao moved to the city of Jieyang near the eastern border of the Guangdong province. A place where she knows family and where she could have access to the legal and medical infrastructure, that the Chinese authorities would withhold from her in Guangzhou. In her neighbourhood in Jieyang she finds a community of mothers working for the textile industry, mainly for Mattel and other western brands, mainly from home. Here, at a four-hours-car-drive from the economic center of Guangzhou, she finds a setting in which she can work and live with her daughter, while planning the next steps. The installation on display behind the frontal window of SYNNIKA is produced in Jieyang by this community of mothers around the newborn Ultra – interwoven by daily routine of informal labour, expanded motherhood and the global textile industry. The pieces in the installation are based on textiles, fashion, video and politics of everyday life, portraing the reality and potential future of the Mothers of Ultra.

NIKA.haus
Niddastraße 57
60329 Frankfurt am Main

The installation is supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main.