ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the work of Migrant Artists Mutual Aid (MaMa) as cultural peacebuilding. Founded in 2011, MaMa is a cross-national arts collective of women, mothers, migrants, artists, academics, and activists who work together to support members who are seeking sanctuary, and campaign for justice in the migration system. Cultural peacebuilding is a response to cultural violence and provides an analytical framework to understand the changes that take place through applied performance. Maternal performance has the capacity to craft new identities and solidarities in the historic shadow of colonialism, genocide, and slavery. This chapter narrates this process through vignettes of MaMa's palimpsest performances. The examples of MaMa's performance work draw on conventions of qualitative inquiry in everyday life and autoethnographic writing, which locate the author's voice as qualitative research material. Autoethnographic reflections work to contextualise maternal performance through the lens of lived experience. This chapter illustrates that performative maternal solidarity not only impacts on the lived experience of the mother artist but also is amplified through performance to address the structural violence of the UK immigration system.
