In 1988 Lee Maracle published I Am Woman, a collection of essays in which the Stó:lō author addresses the impacts of colonialism on First Nations women and girls.1 In her text ‘Education’, Maracle describes how colonialism has systematically appropriated, distorted and in some cases destroyed Indigenous knowledge. It was here that she coined the term ‘rematriation’ to describe the reclaiming of ancestral knowledge as an act inseparable from decolonisation.2
The concept of rematriation is central to Mother Lines. The contributions to this edition of Tate Papers demonstrate that it is not a single tradition but a recurring impulse to restore knowledge that has been erased, and to recover the relationships that carry it forward. The authors included here speak with particular force at a time when the destruction of heritage and the suppression of histories and identities have become instruments of power.
The practice of Nadia Myre, discussed in the artist’s conversation with Tiffany Boyle, directly enacts Maracle’s call for recovery. A member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation, Myre draws on Algonquin material traditions to negotiate her Indigenous identity. The impulse to reclaim ancestral knowledge also shapes the practices of three Kazakh women artists discussed by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek who draw on the symbolism of nomadic architecture to process inherited trauma.
While rematriation is rooted in Indigenous thought, its relevance extends far beyond those origins. Writing about the rising influence of the grandmother on contemporary artists, Catherine Wood, Interim Director of Tate Modern, points to a ‘significant pivot, not only away from patriarchy but also beyond women-only feminism’.3 Wood’s observation that Indigenous practices are ‘only part of the picture’ is reflected in this issue, where rematriation surfaces in a variety of distinct cultural and material practices.
Hana Halilaj and Valentine Umanksy’s discussion of a Balkan sonic practice traditionally performed by women considers how gendered knowledge is transmitted across generations and adopted by contemporary artists. Isabel Englebert examines transgenerational knowledge and transnational feminist art practice through a script developed and practiced solely by women in southwestern China. Danielle Andréa Krikorian analyses the work of the Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh, whose collaborative art practice is shaped by displacement and an absence of official archives. In a conversation with Calum Neill the artist Lyndsay Mann speaks about her documentary film As You Were 2024, in which she traces embodied knowledge through conversations with obstetricians and midwives.
In a first for the journal, we are pleased to include three practice-research contributions. Marcia Michael offers a profound reflection of an encounter between herself and her mother, a physical expression of literary and matrilineal traditions of care. Rasha Obaid traces the connections between her grandmother’s textile techniques and her stone carving practice, a form of making in which ancestral knowledge is enacted to create a material dialogue. Lesley McIntyre recovers the material and emotional histories of an Irish Famine-era dwelling through women’s narratives and art practice.
Mother Lines grew out of sustained dialogue with Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational (HTRC:T).4 In 2025 the Centre’s activities focused on artists privileging modes of embodied and ancestral knowledge primarily passed on through women – a body of enquiry this issue seeks to extend and amplify. Established in 2019, HTRC:T has been integral to Tate’s commitment to engage a broader audience in the United Kingdom and around the world. Contributing to numerous collections and acquisitions beyond Europe and North America, the Centre has transformed how Tate shares knowledge about art histories and practices.5 Adjunct curatorial roles have been established through HRCT:T in the fields of Africa and the African Diaspora; First Nations and Indigenous Art; Caribbean Diasporic Art; and Art and Ecology.6 The Centre also hosts an annual symposium that examines themes related to its research and further extends Tate’s engagement with global audiences.
Complementing the written contributions, Mother Lines brings together a selection of video excerpts from the HTRC:T symposium Ancestral Knowledges: My Grandmother is My School, held at Tate Modern in November 2025.7 From Charmaine Watkiss’s embodied engagement with Indigenous plant medicine and Mirna Bamieh’s reflection on food as a site of cultural endurance, to the Mataaho Collective’s teaching and learning environment, where the transmission of knowledge becomes a collectively embodied act, these talks and performances extend the issue’s central argument into the space of gathering and making, reminding us that rematriation is, above all, a practice.