Artists & Mothers Announce 2026 Childcare Grant Recipients

Empowering Artistic Mothers: Bridging Creativity and Family Life

Pioneering Support for Artistic Mothers

Artists & Mothers, a prominent New York City nonprofit, has announced the 2026 recipients of its acclaimed $25,000 grant. This program is specifically designed for artists who identify as mothers, providing crucial funding to cover nine months of childcare expenses. The grant targets both emerging and mid-career artists who are raising children under the age of three, recognizing the critical period when support is most needed.

Diverse Artistic Voices Recognized

This year's awardees showcase a wide spectrum of artistic disciplines, conceptual explorations, and stylistic approaches. Mimi Ọnụọha, for instance, delves into the intricate connections between humanity and machine intelligence. Her work often integrates personal family photographs with digital imagery, as seen in her 2025 video installation, Ground Truths. This piece notably utilized machine-learning to uncover a hidden mass grave near her hometown, revealing a poignant historical narrative.

Honoring Cultural Heritage Through Art

Nickola Pottinger, an artist with Jamaican roots raised in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, employs various mediums including drawing, collage, and sculpture. Her sculptural series, known as “duppies”—a Jamaican Patois term for ghosts—serves as a homage to her cultural background. Pottinger incorporates found family heirlooms, reclaimed materials, and pigmented pulp derived from personal documents and previous artworks, all blended together, to form the essence of her creations. Her impactful work was featured in a 2025 exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and is also part of this year's Greater New York survey at MoMA PS1.

The Transformative Impact of Childcare Grants

Pottinger expressed profound gratitude, stating that the Artists & Mothers grant marks a pivotal moment in her life. She highlighted how this support enables her daughter to access high-quality early childhood education, while simultaneously affording her the essential time and space to continue developing her artistic practice alongside her maternal responsibilities. She emphasized the rarity and significance of such comprehensive support. Ọnụọha echoed this sentiment, underscoring that both creative work and motherhood are demanding endeavors, and Artists & Mothers is one of the few organizations that truly acknowledges this reality.

Challenging Perceptions of Domesticity and Capitalism

Sara Cwynar, a Vancouver-born artist residing in Brooklyn, is renowned for her photography, filmmaking, and installations that feature visually striking collages infused with pop-cultural references. Her 2025 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston employed search-engine algorithms to construct collages depicting reclining women, luxury vehicles, and idealized food. These images, paired with handwritten notes, provocatively question the performative aspects of domestic life and the advertising of consumerism. Her work often critiques capitalism by mirroring the pervasive and passive consumption driven by social media.

Exploring Technology's Influence and Balancing Motherhood with Artistic Pursuits

Trisha Baga, a native of Queens, works across multimedia installations, ceramics, and performance, with a particular focus on technology's increasing integration into daily life. Last year, she discussed with Art in America her return to filmmaking after a five-year break to concentrate on painting, having initially gained recognition for her 3D video art. Now sharing her studio with her toddler, Homer, Baga reflected on how motherhood has integrated into her artistic process: "While making the work, I eventually figured out a way to think about it while I was hanging out with my kid, Homer, and to film with him. He'd get excited and be like, 'It's time to make video art! Where's my tripod?'"

A Game-Changer for Artists and Mothers

Cwynar conveyed to ARTnews that having a child as an artist in America presents immense challenges, often leaving her feeling fragmented. She described the "insane cognitive dissonance" of experiencing immense personal joy alongside intense professional stress while striving to sustain both her work and studio practice. She concluded that this grant is an "absolute game changer" for artists facing similar circumstances.

The Enduring Legacy of Artists & Mothers

This initiative marks the third cycle of grants awarded by Artists & Mothers. Previous recipients include Carissa Rodriguez, followed by Alison Janae Hamilton, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and Cecilia Lopez. The program was co-founded by artist Maria De Victoria and arts consultant Julia Trotta, who, as Trotta mentioned in a 2024 ARTnews interview, were "workshopping an idea around a resource for artists who are mothers." The grant amount of $25,000 was deliberately set to roughly match the average annual cost of full-time childcare in New York City, highlighting the organization's practical and impactful approach to supporting artistic mothers.