Maggie McCutcheon

The unwed mother; the general public knew of her existence, yet she was determined to remain hidden from view at all costs. The almost exclusive whiteness and Christianity of unwed mothers in postwar North American maternity homes was evidence of a supposed redeemable quality. The caveat, however, rests on the mothers giving up their babies to reenter society unscathed and unaccompanied. These women became a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon because of the sprawling system which mandated adoption immediately post-birth, defining the mothers by their labour and complicit silence – a silence that often spanned a lifetime.

With the help of her father, the artist explores these historical narratives through a contemporary lens, seeking connection with her own newly discovered grandmother – an unwed mother whose story remains obscured.