Naima Green: Reframing Motherhood
The International Center of Photography in New York presents Naima Green’s “Instead, I spin fantasies,” an exhibition that reframes pregnancy and motherhood as lived, imagined, resisted, and projected experiences.
By Gaia Squarci. Photographs by Naima Green
Naima Green’s images operate through performance, drawing from real situations while deconstructing familiar visual codes. Across photographs and their titles, she adopts a playful tone that questions the mythology surrounding pregnancy and motherhood, exposing moments of self-reflection, exhaustion, transformation, and the occasional erosion of selfhood.
Her work insists on multiplicity, refusing the singular, idealized narrative often associated with maternal identity. Rather than affirming convention, Naima Green opens space for ambiguity and contradiction. Her intention is not to define motherhood, but to hold its many possibilities: desired, imposed, deferred, or rejected.
The result is a body of work that acknowledges vulnerability while remaining self-aware, inviting viewers to reconsider how maternal narratives are constructed and consumed.
The exhibition “Instead, I spin fantasies” is on view at The International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City until January 2026.
