Mothering Myths

Tuesday May 13 | 13:00 - 22:00 | locations: Centraal Museum, Agnietenstraat 1, Utrecht & Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, Lucasbolwerk 24, Utrecht

As part of the exhibition Good Mom/Bad Mom, the performance Battlefield of Dreams, and the project Beyond the Nuclear Family, we're joining forces on Tuesday, May 13th for a special day filled with art, theater, conversation, and gathering (and a covered wagon!). We'll engage with thinkers, artists, and writers to discuss issues of 'mothering' and the politics of the womb. A day where we come together to explore how we can break with entrenched expectations – about bodies, mothers, fathers, families, care, and collectivity. Welcome!


Tickets

Program

15:00 – Welcome at the auditorium of Centraal Museum

15:15 – Introduction to the exhibition Good Mom/Bad Mom

by curators Heske ten Cate and Laurie Cluitmans.

15:30 – 16:45 – Gallery tour led by curators together with artists providing explanations of their work

16:45 - 17:15 – Introduction to Beyond the Nuclear Family with Mirthe Berentsen in Café Centraal

17:15 – Covered wagon tour with Beyond the Nuclear Family

Joint walk from the museum to Stadsschouwburg Utrecht by covered wagon, following the legendary covered wagon tour of the Dolle Mina's in 1972.

18:30 – Communal dinner at Stadsschouwburg Utrecht

A shared dinner as a moment for meeting and reflection.

20:00 - 22:00 – Performance Battlefield of Dreams

This acclaimed theater production by Floor Houwink ten Cate about (un)wanted childlessness, fertility treatments, abortion, parenthood, and the right to autonomy will be enriched with a conversation between Dr. Bahareh Goodarzi and Jo-an van der Tol (family law attorney), in collaboration with De Balie Amsterdam.

Ticket prices

Program at Centraal Museum AND Theater Utrecht:
€45,00

Student price:
€25,00

Program at Centraal Museum with Podiumpas (or without Theater Utrecht):
€15,00

Program at Theater Utrecht with Museumjaarkaart (or without Centraal Museum):
€25,00

Beyond the Nuclear Family

An exhibition about care, beyond the nuclear family

May till September 2025 | Brummelkamp Galerie, Amsterdam UMC locatie AMC

Opening and symposium: Art & Knowledge: Care, beyond the nuclear family

Thursday, May 22 | 15:00 - 17:00 | Brummelkamp Gallery, VUMC Locatie AMC (Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam)

RSVP via this link


We invite you to a special edition of Kunst & Kennis, where art and science come together in a meaningful conversation about family, care, and identity. In this episode, writer and artist Mirthe Berentsen opens her curated exhibition Beyond the Nuclear Family in the Brummelkamp gallery, featuring some thirty artworks that explore themes such as care, birth, and the (chosen) family. She examines how political choices shape our most intimate relationships and advocates for a broader vision of care beyond traditional family structures.

Following the lecture, Annelijn Wensing-Kruger, head of the gender and sexology department at Amsterdam UMC, psychologist and chair of the Knowledge and Care Center for Gender Dysphoria, will offer a reflection on chosen family. Laurine Verweijen will be our moderator, and contribute a poem reading to the program. Together with artist Marieke Zwart, they will discuss reproductive care, all care between birth and death. And the importance of 'liminal spaces' - that elusive area between fixed categories - and how this concept helps us understand gender, care, identity, and chosen family.

The conversation touches on fundamental questions: How do people relate to each other in equality? How can we redistribute care beyond the traditional family? And what insights can we gain by bringing together artistic and scientific perspectives? An inspiring afternoon about care beyond the nuclear family.

This afternoon also marks the launch of Beyond the Nuclear Family, a journey through the Netherlands in which Berentsen travels to various museums and cultural institutions across the country, inspired by the legendary horse-drawn carriage tour of the Dolle Mina's in 1972. During this tour, she will engage in conversations with writers, artists, and activists about different aspects of the family. After the opening you are warmly invited to join the walk from AMC to the next location, CBK Zuidoost.

About the exhibition

"The hospital is like a museum of life, a place where life begins and sometimes ends. But there are no houses, no single-family homes; it is a fusion, a collective, a reflection of how I would like to see the world." — Mirthe Berentsen

In the exhibition Beyond the Nuclear Family, writer and artist Mirthe Berentsen explores the concept of the nuclear family, a living structure that is historically relatively new yet is considered the most obvious way of living together. The exhibition shows dozens of artworks, mainly from the Amsterdam UMC collection, that reflect on the family - by exploring themes such as care, birth, fantasy, and utopias. The exhibition questions the political choices that shape our most intimate relationships and advocates for a broader vision of care beyond traditional family structures.

Participating artists include: Melanie Bonajo, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Eva Spierenburg, Femmy Otten, Constant Nieuwenhuijs, Ansuya Blom, Alexandra Leykauf, Mirthe Berentsen, Eugene Brands, Marlene Dumas, Anton Heyboer, Rinella Alfonso, Maria Roosen, Marieke Zwart, Rinella Alfonso

The Visualization of Care

Workshop

Friday, May 23 | 16:00 - 19:00 | CBK Zuidoost, Open Space, Heesterveld 35A

Amsterdam Art Week


CBK Zuidoost and Beyond the Nuclear Family invites you to an inspiring afternoon exploring the unseen forces of care, dreams, and birth.

Artist and writer Mirthe Berentsen will open the event with a poem and will moderate the rest of the day. In his performance-lecture artist Daniel Godínez Nivón reflects on the profound connection between dreams and midwifery. To midwife the births of the world is to listen attentively — to what is emerging, latent, and possible. This talk reimagines care and conservation as forms of midwifery, guiding the ongoing birth of life and the world itself.

Following this, artist Marieke Zwart welcomes you to an open drawing table. In the workshop, we'll use everyday objects and memories to engage our imagination and try to find forms for important moments of care. The focus isn't so much on learning to draw, but on discovering together whether care can take shape in a drawing. What does care look like when we think about birth, professional caregiving, or caring for others? That often invisible force that makes all life possible. Everyone is welcome and please bring an object that is meaningful to you in relation to care, from childbirth to family caregiving and death.

Midwives will be present during the afternoon to share their perspectives and experiences. Come by, participate, and help us visualize these crucial but often unseen moments of care.

Daniel Godínez Nivón (MX)

is an artist working with indigenous communities through drawing, installation, and performance. His practice centers on tequio, a communal working system. He collaborates with indigenous midwives, studying sleep and dreams as healing tools.

Marieke Zwart (NL)

is an artist who works with drawings, film, and installations. Recently she has dedicated herself to an ongoing drawing project focused on care in Amsterdam's Bijlmermeer. She documents the work of midwife, observing intimate care moments in homes throughout Zuidoost and the AMC hospital.

Interwoven through Textile

Workshop

Saturday, May 24 | 1:00 - 4:00 PM | Amsterdam Museum, Amstel 51, Amsterdam

Amsterdam Museum


Beyond the Nuclear Family and the Amsterdam Museum are organizing a unique textile workshop with artists Yamuna Forzani and Carmen Schabracq during Amsterdam Art Week. On May 24, Berentsen stops with the covered wagon at the Amsterdam Museum for an inspiring textile workshop. Contribute to the wagon cover with a piece of textile that has meaning for you.

Over de workshop

The cover that Berentsen carries along the way is supplemented with new pieces of textile that visitors bring at each location where she stops. Histories and stories about families, origins, material knowledge, and traditions become interwoven with each other. During the workshop, we invite you to bring a piece of fabric that reminds you of your family. Think of clothing, handkerchiefs, kitchen textiles, doll clothes, whatever. Together we will embroider them, cut them up, and attach them to the large wagon cover. During the workshop, you will be guided and engage in conversation with artists and experts.

The cover forms a place where individual stories transcend their history and become part of a larger common narrative about origins, generations, tradition, and family. This place is not static, but in motion – just like our journey, and just like the language that tells our stories.

Added benefit: everyone who contributes to the cover can put this on their CV as a 'group exhibition.' A great opportunity for artists with care responsibilities, such as young children, who often face a gap in their CV. Write your name down during the workshop, and when the cover is exhibited in the future, you may officially mention it as participation in a group exhibition. Come to the workshop and become part of the journey!

Breakfast tour & poetry in sign language

Part of the exhibition What Cannot Be Held

Sunday May 25 | 10:30 - 12:00 | Brakke Grond, Nes 45, Amsterdam

Brakke Grond

On Sunday, May 25, there will be a guided tour of the exhibition What Cannot Be Held - especially for deaf, hard of hearing and hearing visitors of all ages. This guided tour is provided by Musea in Gebaren, a platform that makes art and culture accessible in sign language for deaf and hard of hearing art lovers.

The tour will be followed by a poetic reading in Dutch Sign Language, from author and artist Mirthe Berentsen's forthcoming book about the family. In it, she explores the importance of sign language, translation and art - themes that tie in seamlessly with the exhibition, which deals with the vulnerable position of people in a changing world. The event will create space for different ways of communicating and expressing.

During Amsterdam Art Week, Berentsen will tour various locations in Amsterdam to engage in dialogue with these places and their audiences. Everyone is welcome at De Brakke Grond to enjoy art, language and connection in various forms together. Children are also cordially invited!

Beyond the Nuclear Family: The legacy of the Dolle Minas

An afternoon about feminist heritage, care, and activism.

Tuesday, May 27 | 14:00 - 17:00 PM | location: Centraal Museum, Agnietenstraat 1, Utrecht


What does feminist activism mean today? What do we carry with us from the past, and how do we transform that into new forms of care, resistance, and connection?

On May 27, Centraal Museum and Beyond the Nuclear Family invite you to an afternoon where we look back and forward. We reflect on the legacy of the Dolle Mina's – who stood on the barricades in the early 70s for abortion, reproductive rights, gender equality, affordable childcare, and breaking through traditional family structures. And we look ahead, as we explore together how these themes are at least as urgent today.

Programme

14:00 – Exhibition tour: Good Mom/Bad Mom

Curators Heske ten Cate and Laurie Cluitmans guide you through the exhibition’s thematic “time capsules”, which include archival materials from ATRIA and a special focus on the Dolle Mina movement.

14:30 – Introduction to Beyond the Nuclear Family

Mirthe Berentsen introduces her traveling project. Fifty years after the original carriage tour of the Dolle Minas, she embarks on a new journey across the Netherlands to continue essential conversations about feminism, family structures, and care.

14:45 – Film screening: You Don’t Just Have an Abortion

A groundbreaking 1975 film by Hillie Molenaar

16:30 – Intergenerational conversation

We conclude the afternoon with a conversation led by Nel Willekens, one of the original Dolle Mina activists who participated in the 1972 horse and carriage tour. She reflects on the nuclear family, the changes their activism sparked, and the struggles that remain today.

Between Art and Family

Thursday May 29 | 14:30 - 17:00 | Museum MORE, Hoofdstraat 28, Gorssel

Museum MORE




On Ascension Day, Museum MORE and Beyond The Nuclear Family invite you to "Between Art and Child" - a delightful afternoon exploring art, parenthood, and family in all its forms.

Writer and artist Mirthe Berentsen is traveling through the Netherlands this summer with a covered wagon, just like the Dolle Mina feminist activists did in 1972! Help create this wagon cover: bring a piece of fabric that means something to you - an old handkerchief, a piece of baby clothing, or other textile with a story. Together, all these pieces will form a "patchwork family" of diverse backgrounds and families.

During the creating process, there will be conversations with Maaike Meijer, Joke de Wolf, and Maite van Dijk about combining art and parenthood. We'll also talk with artists Koos Buster, Bas Losekoot and Lise Soré and their children from the exhibition Reality Check.

Everything flows together: children ask questions, adults embroider, everyone participates in whatever they enjoy. Come join us and be part of this creative family afternoon!

Beyond the Nuclear Family, een reis door de nacht

As part of the exhibition Een bezoek aan de ander (A Visit to the Other)

May 30 - 31 2025 | 18:00 - 09:30 | Dat Bolwerck, Zaadmarkt 112, Zutphen

Tickets

From Friday, May 30 to Saturday, May 31, 2025, Dat Bolwerck and Beyond the Nuclear Family invite you to a unique experience. After closing time, Dat Bolwerck opens its doors for an intimate event where we will not only create and experience art together, and share old and new stories, but also dine and spend the night in the national monument dating back to 1549.

How sustainable is the ideal of the nuclear family? Writer and artist Mirthe Berentsen will be travelling through the Netherlands from summer 2025 with her project Beyond the Nuclear Family. A journey of discovery that breaks down entrenched ideas about family structures and care. She proposes a surprising alternative: The origin of the Dutch word ‘gezin’ (family) comes from ghesinde, which means travelling companionship - people walking the same path together, linked not by biology but by a shared journey.

Throughout the evening, we will weave together different backgrounds, experiences, ingredients, histories, and the environment. We will eat together and literally taste the seasons. During the workshop, we will draw together on a cadavre exquis, a drawing technique in which everyone contributes a part of a drawing, and individual authorship dissolves. Everyone contributes without controlling the whole and trusts each other's contributions. As night falls, the conversations will deepen and we will listen to local myths and legends - stories that often fall outside the dominant historical narratives. Afterwards, we’ll spend the night surrounded by art and travel together into a new day.

Recipes as carriers of cultural identity and resistance: Beyond the Nuclear Family

Monday June 2nd | 17:00 - 22:00 | Het Resort, Groningen

Het Resort

Recipes are powerful vessels of knowledge that transcend mere cooking instructions. They embody cultural heritage, medicinal wisdom, and life lessons that flow between generations and across communities. While historically situated in women's spaces, recipe-sharing creates networks that extend beyond conventional family boundaries, forming pathways of care and connection.

Studium Resort in collaboration with Beyond the Nuclear Family will explore how culinary traditions honor histories while fostering new forms of community and kinship. Participants are invited to bring cherished recipes from their background—whether from blood relatives or chosen family, handwritten or from a book.

Mirthe Berentsen will open the day with a reflection on the Achterhoekse tradition of Kroamschudderswegge — a bread given to the new mother after childbirth that marks time through food and communal care. Dr. Brenda Bartelink from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen will discuss food's relationship to cultural identity. Following the lecture, we'll gather for a collective zine-making workshop, where the participants' recipes will be compiled into a shared recipe book. This collaborative process mirrors the way knowledge has been preserved and exchanged across time and borders, creating a tangible artifact of our diverse experiences.

In their cooking workshop afterwards, Marente van der Valk and Henry Alles will guide participants in preparing a traditional poffert and a medicinal broth using locally foraged herbs, demonstrating how recipes embody regional knowledge while adapting to new contexts.

Our communal dinner afterwards serves as both culmination and embodiment of these explorations. As we share food prepared together, we participate in the living tradition of using meals to forge connections. Through this gathering, we ask: how can traditional knowledge and food practices help us imagine new forms of community making?

Programma

17:00 - 17:15 – Doors open (hand in recipes)

17:15 - 17:25 – Introduction

Mirthe Berentsen

17:30 - 18:30 – Lecture

Dr. Brenda Bartelink & conversation participants

18:30 - 20:30 – Collective Recipe Exchange & Zine-making

18:30 - 20:30 – Cooking Workshop

Marente van der Valk & Henry Alles

20:30 - 21:30 – Communal Dinner

21:30 - 22:00 – Closing Reflections

In the summer of 2025, we'll be visiting SYB for a short research period and organizing a special day of programming, as our programs align. With "Unpacking the House," Kunsthuis SYB investigates how the domestic and the political are connected. There is a great urgency for an intergenerational and interregional dialogue about finding strength from the rural spaces. In this program, Kunsthuis SYB invites artists and writers to explore and research feminist and queer strategies within a rural environment.

The exhibition that will be on display during that time is Selma Selman's "600 Years of Migrant Mothers." This convergence creates a powerful context to explore shared interests in family, heritage, embodiment, migration, and identity – offering new perspectives on reimagining family structures.

kunsthuissyb.nl

This fall, I'll participate in a focused mini-residency at Kunstwerk Kolderveen. Embracing their ethos of meaningful professional and artistic exchange, I hope to reflect on the tour and nurture the ongoing conversations about reimagining family structures beyond traditional models—exploring how intergenerational connections can enrich our understanding of care and kinship.

kunstwerkkolderveen.nl