Baby on a Zebra

Oil and Digital Collage Image Transfer

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic, along with bringing much suffering and death, also brought the world to a standstill and forced most children out of their schools and into online classrooms. What is now coming to light however, is the inequitable and gendered issue that it was most often mothers who took on extra burdens for their families during the pandemic, frequently at the sacrifice of their own careers and mental health. As our society is currently structured, mothers still carry the majority of the child-rearing work, household obligations, and mental load of parenting whether or not they work outside the home; a system which became untenable in the pandemic. I see the recent acknowledgement of the work and overwork of mothers as a silver lining and a first step in ushering change. In my work, I utilize the metaphor of mothers as beasts of burden to bring attention to this previously invisible issue.