Arts Review: “Gestures of Care” at ICOSA Collective

Divine Feminine is a nifty term. I’m picturing a little fairy fluttering through a brightly lit forest; then I blink, and a burlap-clad tradwife appears in my mental viewfinder. The biblical dog whistle gives some a sense of moral superiority, while others are just fine as spiritual underdogs. But what about those caught in the middle? 

Austin-based artists Ana Treviño and Chantal Lesley know the answer to that question. In “Gestures of Care,” their joint show at ICOSA Collective, their differing perspectives – Lesley focuses on all the ways women take care of others and Treviño’s work is based specifically on raising a child – take unique paths, but both view motherhood as a complex, ongoing process. Notably, their work is free from male figures.

For Lesley’s Who am I to Question the Divine?, a series of five multimedia collages, the artist collaborated with children who drew flowers and took pictures of landscapes that interested them. Lesley carved each element out, encircling the rings of childlike scribbles within larger rings of their photos, as if to suggest that she is the one questioning. 

Lesley also worked with kids in creating The Tuft of Flowers 1 & 2: fabric flower patches, also modeled after the drawings, that sit at ground level in the gallery. Presented from the children’s point of view, her depiction of care is subtler than Treviño’s, whose To Have and To Hold video documentary plays in the corner. On one screen, the lens focuses on the hands of expecting mothers, who rest them on their stomachs. Adjacent, a screen shows scenes of nature, small kids, and small kids in nature. The words of Treviño’s interviewees, all pregnant women, carry throughout the gallery as they voice their concerns and hopes. One wonders if motherhood is a natural path for women; one thinks about the generations before and after her own; and one, in sort of a meta turn, wonders if being a mother is compatible with being an artist. There are no answers given to these questions, much like how one is on their own, abandoned by society, if they decide to forgo its accepted norms.

In Lesley’s I See Flowers Everywhere, sunlight shines through red and yellow firewheel flowers, leaving shadows on a pair of knees. As the photo’s title suggests, flowers and their growth are often recognized in preference over their gardener, whose care often goes unnoticed. Yet Lesley focuses specifically on the shadows, and the legs they appear on. Her images also explore caring for a pet, holding hands with an ailing parent, and braiding a sibling’s hair. Although I See Flowers Everywhere is the least literal caring gesture of the lot, its understated, up-for-interpretation power gives it a central role in the exhibit.

On two stands in the middle of the gallery, small wax sculptures stand (and sit). Having researched Mesoamerican fertility figures, which can often be seen stuck up on wires in the glass cases of museums, Treviño draws from her ancestral connection to Olmec and Aztec civilizations by turning her own body into modern versions via 3D scanning technology (Fertility Figure Study I-III).

Once again, the divine is brought into question. Stone fertility figures in Mesoamerica were tied to agricultural abundance, reproduction, and spirituality. The small items were used in rituals, grave offerings, and ceremonies to invoke the generative powers of the earth and ensure societal survival. However, Treviño’s rough-around-the-edges mini wax sculptures serve a different purpose. They connect her work to her heritage, but also question the role that the body has taken in modern times.

The largest physical item hangs in the gallery’s back corner. Apapachame, or “hug me” in English, is a small hammock, macramed from Treviño’s son’s clothing. It lies slack, waiting for the moment when the roles are reversed and the caretaker becomes the caregiver. 

Together, Treviño and Lesley’s work highlights often unseen parts of motherhood, arguing that it is not parallel to rigid gender norms, it’s not whatever the “divine feminine” is, and it’s not the same as it has been depicted as throughout history. Motherhood is found in the shadows – it’s in each gesture of care.

This article appears in August 28 • 2026.