In Not My Mother, Donna Sy explores the fragile terrain between absence and belonging.

Rooted in deeply personal experience, the exhibition unfolds through memories shaped

by loss, resilience, and the quiet gestures of care that often arrive from unexpected

places.

These paintings pay tribute to the women who assumed the role of mother not through

blood, but through compassion, constancy, and choice. Their presence reveals that

kinship extends beyond inheritance—that love, guidance, and belonging can be

cultivated through acts of generosity as profound as any familial bond.

Transforming intimate experiences into poetic visual narratives, Sy reflects on the ways

we carry our earliest wounds while remaining capable of growth beyond them. Her

works acknowledge the lasting imprint of absence without allowing it to eclipse the

possibility of healing. Instead, they speak to the resilience of the human spirit and to the

transformative power of those who choose to nurture.

Not My Mother is ultimately a meditation on motherhood beyond biology, honoring the

people who become our homes through love freely given. It is a testament to our

capacity to rebuild, to reclaim ourselves, and to flourish beyond what we were first

taught to expect.