_The Worry Box Project

In The Worry Box Project, artist Irene Lusztig has created a forum for maternal anxieties. Lusztig collects submissions from mothers about their deepest fears. She then writes the fears out by hand, rolls each into a scrap of paper and uses the website as an archive for this process. While contributors could choose between submitting a “waking” or “dream” anxiety, the slips of paper offer no such distinction, complicating the notion of fears as real or imagined. Some are straightforward: I worry about being too much like my mother and not enough like her; while others turn ominous: There will be no child; or nightmarish: My daughter never grows any teeth and has to get dentures. The project is ongoing and will be completed when the digital “worry box” fills up. It is also a companion piece to the film The Motherhood Archives.