Not simply users of technology, women have played vital roles as inventors and makers across the history of technology. Yet their contributions aren’t always acknowledged in popular and official histories of technological innovation. Motherboards brings together artists whose work foregrounds the many ways that women have shaped the technology industry.

Motherboards highlights the central role of women in technology in three primary ways: by tracing the links between computers and the traditionally feminine practice of weaving; by exploring the legacy of women “computers” in the early twentieth century; and by attending to the women whose hands have materialized the technologies we use every day. Featuring artists from California and beyond, the exhibition maps an extensive network of women’s work in technology, connecting Silicon Valley’s laboratories and garages to looms, desks, kitchens, and assembly lines across the globe.