ISSN 1753-9854

Tate Papers no.37: Mother Lines Spring 2026

The articles in this issue explore transgenerational connections and ancestral knowledge in art. Developed in collaboration with Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, Mother Lines reflects Tate’s wider programme, focusing on artists who centre modes of embodied and ancestral knowledge primarily passed on through women. In seeking to restore relationships to histories and environments, the practices explored in this issue resist cultural and spiritual erasure.

Alongside traditional research articles and artist interviews, the issue includes contributions by practice-researchers that reveal a range of disciplinary approaches to the themes examined.

This edition of Tate Papers is supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor.

In this issue

Editorial

‘first the language of making’: Tiffany Boyle in Conversation with Nadia Myre

Tiffany Boyle and Nadia Myre

Nüshu and the Quiet Transmission of Memory

Isabel Englebert

Mother and me

Marcia Michael

‘no babies, no boobs, no bumps’: Lyndsay Mann in Conversation with Calum Neill

Ruth Bretherick, Lyndsay Mann and Calum Neill

The Mother Yurt, Ancestral Memory and Post Nomadic Art Practices in Kazakhstan

Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek

Recovering Irish Famine Architecture through Women’s Labour and Art Practice

Lesley McIntyre

She who starts the song...: Sonic Practice and Gendered Transmission in Kosovo

Hana Halilaj and Valentine Umansky

Affective Rematriation in the Art of Mounira Al Solh

Danielle Andréa Krikorian

From Thread to Stone

Rasha Obaid

Ancestral Knowledges: My Grandmother Is My School

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