“If you become a crocus hidden in a garden,” said his mother, “I will be a gardener. And I will find you.”
– The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown

Harriet Alida Lye's Motherclown is an electric novel about art and inheritance, desire and devotion, and motherhood. When Elise disappears into Paris, her mother, Catherine, follows. The two women are separated by what they cannot say, but drawn together by the ferocious, fragile love of mothers and daughters. The clown is the inner child, the Fool deep within us all, and to find it requires a relentless excavation of the self. At Elise’s “clown school,” performance is not a mask; rather, it is profound vulnerability. The novel explores whether a daughter can come into her own while still inside her mother's gaze, and also whether she can learn to see her mother not as a fixed point, but as someone equally unfinished, equally searching, equally alive to becoming.

The works gathered in this exhibition range from direct depictions of mothers and daughters to pieces that engage more conceptually, using process and material to probe the same questions as the novel without seeking to illustrate. The artworks explore the longing to be truly seen by the woman who raised you, or the one you are raising, and the equal longing to see her clearly in return. What opens in that gap is a beautiful, hopeful possibility. When we release the demand to be fully legible — to our mothers, our daughters, ourselves — something else becomes available: an in-between that is less about uncertainty than about permission to remain unfinished, to keep becoming. None of these works resolve the distance between generations. They inhabit it, and investigate what grows in the open space when we allow for the unknown.

Curated by Ash A. Mulvihill

To Visit the Space:

Book a complementary private viewing and tour with the curator during the exhibition run here, reserve via the link below or email ash@nintheditions.com for an appointment.

Reserve your time here.

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JUNE 2 - JUNE 16th, 2026