We are an incubator mindfully cultivating community and seeking meaningful collaborations to ignite thinking and art-making aligned with spirit work.

Mother Mercy is also a vessel, birthing authentic projects, using an ethic of artistic and intellectual collaboration.

With self-realization and community at the core, we are inherently political; grounded in Black liberation.

Our vision considers the long haul of practicing liberation amid and beyond movement making.

We take sharp turns and create soft places to land. We protect, we teach, and we grow.

“Ultimately it comes down to making yourself and the people who can share it with you, in some way, more themselves, to make you more yourself, to make human beings more themselves, and therefore, by extension, better, stronger, more real. Isn’t this the function of all art?”

- AUDRE LORDE

Projects

We make time and space to reimagine the purpose and power of our creativity.

Writing Series

for aspiring & engaged Black writers

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Asset 12.png — Public Art

for meditation, stimulation, and liberation
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Call to Create (C2C)

One of the ways we cultivate and engage with community to do birthwork is through our Call to Create (C2C), a 9-month incubation process interrogating a singular question while making art.
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WIMBM Cover Art.jpg — What I Mean By Mercy

WIMBM is a series of short films produced by Mother Mercy and premiered at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, NY on November 11, 2017.
Each film is a visual adaptation of different yet connected poems written by JME. This project served as a thinking through, a conceptualization of what mercy is; a remembering and remapping of some ways mercy can be manifested.
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We reserve the right to consistently redefine the mission guiding this work.

In the spirit of experimentation, our goal is to remain fluid as we hold & push culture.

we know:

01.

Process is the project.

02.

Now is no time to be small.

03.

It is daunting to expand in a world demanding the flattening of our spirits.

mother's musings on a manifesto

About

Mother Mercy was founded in 2017 by JME. In collaboration with other creators, Mother Mercy has produced various art pieces and experiences including What I Mean By Mercy, a three-part series of short films and the Call to Create (C2C), a 9-month incubation process oriented around a guiding question for thinkers and makers across genres and mediums. The 2019 C2C cohort culminated in an open studio event in November 2019, a celebration and an offering to our community of the work completed during the incubation. In February 2021, Mother Mercy premiered Process is the Project: Part 1 at the Boston Globe Black History Month Film Festival. this short film documented the experiences and creative processes of the 2020 C2C cohort in lieu of an open studio. Mother mercy is currently piloting a residency program to sustain community building efforts through newly co-curated projects, while supporting residents in cultivating deeper connections to their mediums and honing their crafts.