Jamie Diamond: Monstra Te Esse Matrem, 2026

Artist-in-Residence Jamie Diamond challenges the idealization of the persona of mother in her work for the Gardner public art façade My mother’s mask came off and I saw her not as a mother, but as a woman. — Jamie Diamond All of us play roles every day. For some, that role is “mother.” But no person inhabits a single role, and no person can play their roles perfectly at all times. When she was eight years old, Gardner Artist-in-Residence Jamie Diamond witnessed her own mother's mask come off. This drove Diamond to write a letter to herself, outlining what kind of mother she would be. That letter marked the beginning of her engagement with the concept of motherhood, fraught with contradictory societal expectations, glorified and belittled. Diamond’s work for the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade, outside of the Gardner Museum, is the latest manifestation of this exploration. In _Monstra Te Esse Matrem_ (show yourself to be a mother), Diamond, now a mother herself, challenges the idealization of motherhood with an image that is both self-portrait and fantasy, asking: what does it mean to be a mother?