Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity: Making Visible the Politics of Home

Home is a word brimming with emotion, expectation and contradiction. It is where love and comfort are sought, yet it can also feel oppressive or unreachable. Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity unpacks the many dimensions of what it means to inhabit this space - physically, emotionally, and socially. Is home a sanctuary, a workplace, or a battleground for equality?
Far from a simple haven, home carries the weight of invisible labor, tension, and even danger. It is shaped by routines and rhythms, often dismissed as mundane or unproductive, yet requiring vast effort. Through engaging with these complexities, this book challenges the simplistic binaries that reduce home to a private, insignificant space.
By turning towards the discomfort produced by our encounters there with dirt, disorder, and ambiguity - aspects most associated with mothers and domestic work - we uncover how home embodies power dynamics and acts of resistance. Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity invites readers to rethink this deeply familiar yet elusive space, recognizing the hidden histories, emotions, and struggles that exist within its walls. Thoughtful and compelling, it sheds light on why home is never just a place, but a profound experience that both shapes us and is shaped by us.

Clare Gallagher is artist, writer, and curator in Northern Ireland, and is senior lecturer in photography in the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University.