Unlikely Mother
(Madre improbable)

2026

Exhibition: sculpture, film, video, works on paper

Madre Improbable brings together two films and a group of video works, sculptures, and works on paper. At its centre, her film Catfish Mother Puddle of Juice (2026) uses the figures of mother and child to consider the visual and linguistic frameworks that assign coherence, value, and legitimacy to bodies. The work draws on research into catfish morphology alongside questions of bodily difference, inheritance, and legibility. Across the exhibition, gestures and objects return to the hand as a site where meaning is produced and unsettled. Language remains central, shaping how bodies are named and understood, and where they exceed those terms. The artist’s practice moves across sculpture, moving image, works on paper, and artist publishing. It attends to fragmentation in history and to the ways knowledge and fantasy are produced and withheld. Working from historical materials as unstable sites shaped by translation and distortion, her practice draws on an interest in the languages through which bodies are disciplined and made legible.

Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City
Curator: Miguel Lopez
Unlikely Mother, 2026, Museo del Chopo, Mexico City, January 31–May 24, 2026 Images Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole, Toronto. Photo: Ramiro Chaves

Exhibition text MOETHER, by Mirene Arsanios [pdf]

Produced by Museo Universitario del Chopo with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico.

Relevant writing & Press:

• Fabiola Iza, “Errant Patterns, Speculative Stories: Nour Bishouty at Museo Universitario del Chopo,”Momus, July 16, 2026.

• Irmgard Emmelhainz, “Nour Bishouty: Por una emancipación cognitiva del régimen moderno de las separaciones,”Artishock Revista, June 20, 2026.

• Magdalyn Asimakis, “A Partial Reading: in conversation with multidisciplinary artist Nour Bishouty,” Public Parking, 2026

• “Unlikely mother”: Nour Bishouty’s exhibition at the museo del chopo. (2026, Mar 20). CE Noticias Financieras, 2026

• María del Carmen Barrios, The Art Newspaper, “Exhibitions to see during Mexico City Art Week”, 4 February 2026 — Includes Unlikely Mother, Nour Bishouty’s solo exhibition at Museo Universitario del Chopo alongside other key exhibitions during Mexico City Art Week, 2026

• Mirene Arsanios, “Moether,” for Unlikely Mother, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City [PDF] (*Exhibition essay)