The Feminine Body, Water, Gestation - The Woman, The Womb, The Portal

I researched women artists that explore in their work maternity, mothers and femineity. I wanted to connect the essay Hydro feminism to Art, and women artists who always have influenced and shaped the way I see my world and understand it.

JUDY CHICAGO – Earth Birth 1984

"This image relates to Chicago’s imagery embracing the truth and beauty of being female; the birth cavity/flower/place of creation, where life is both fertilized and delivered in the natural world."

“Chicago’s images demonstrate a psychological shift within women in Western culture. They afford a vision seldom seen since the Neolithic, when woman embodied creation. Chicago’s images, however, transcend visual resurrection. Together they extol women’s will to self-power on an expansive scale, their will to create and self-create, and their ability to celebrate themselves for that creation. In the Birth Project women birth themselves; they birth the universe and its contents; they birth and care for children. Chicago’s images expose the physical and real but also reveal birth as spiritual and intellectual, a source of myth and symbol”

Earth Birth by Chicago Inspired me first through the obvious connection the artist makes from the feminine body, to birth and water (depicted through the sinuous, organic overlaying lines, the pattern creating waves and the overall immersion of the body in the waves) The women here is depicted opened legs, she seems to become one with water, with her natural environment, she is becoming a fountain. This artwork really interested me as well as in our narrative construction, and our myth making for our performance, we are exploring water as the first, creative, source of life, the ultimate power of life, fertility, and creation (see narrative section in research/padlet) and this artwork depicts as its title states: Earth Birth. The Woman, The Body of Water creating the whole world around her and expanding.

We feel the powerfulness, and the symbiose of the women with nature. The lines create a surrealist effect, almost hypnotic creating a fascination on the audience (also emphasized by the gradient hues of blues), it also relates to my visual research of creating a place of escapes, where your mind meanders.

Sources:

Judy Chicago - I Am My Body: On Judy Chicago’s Birth Project - Link

Financial Times - Miami’s ICA showcases Judy Chicago’s flamboyant feminist visions

Judy Chicago – Earth Birth - Turner Carroll Gallery

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

"Saint Sebastian was an early Christian martyr and saint, and he is usually depicted with his hands behind his back with arrows. Louise often depicts certain kinds of classical imagery with a feminine perspective.

Louise was interested in the idea of aggression, between passivity and aggression, having enemies, being rejected, having people who want something from you. And she’s very interested in that state of where things are not going well, where one is under siege both physically and psychologically. "

"This article explores late works by contemporary artist Louise Bourgeois that illuminate current concerns about ageing maternal bodies and the ambivalent responses of fear and loathing that they provoke. In 2003, Louise Bourgeois made an installation for the Freud Museum in Vienna entitled The Reticent Child, on the subject of her own earlier pregnancy and birth of her son, one of several works featuring maternity and fertility which Bourgeois has created in old age. In Nature Study 2007, made at the age of 96 years, she depicts carnal couples and pregnant and birthing figures embodied in brilliant pinks and scarlet reds. Bourgeois represents women as the powerful agents of the maternal function, marking a return to motherhood as a central topic of her earlier work."

Louise Bourgeois’ work on maternity is something that has always marked me and really interested me. When thinking of maternity, pregnancy, and the connection of the feminine body to water, creation and expansion, her work immediately came into my mind. An artwork that really inspired me in my research and quest of visual influences is Sainte Sebastienne. In this work the body of Saint Sebastienne is attacked by the arrows, but yet it seems resilient, as if it is malleable, made of fluids and shaping itself differently. It inspired me in my later exploration through drawing, anmations and projection making, and this idea of creating an ever changing body, that flows, molds itself differently and englobes everything.

source image and quote: https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/42/675

Louise Bourgeois - Pregnant Woman 2008, Gouache on Paper

Louise Bourgeois - Ste. Sébastienne, 1992. Drypoint. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Chicago, J., Woodman, D. & Gallery., B. U. A., 2012. Judy Chicago : and Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Tracey Emin / photography of Judy Chicago's work by Donald Woodman.. Farnham, UK: Lund Humphries.

Betterton, R., 2009. Louise Bourgeois, ageing, and maternal bodies. Feminist Review, no. 93(ProQuest), pp. 27-45.

NICKI DE SAINT PHALLE -

"The exhibition ”She – A Cathedral” consisted of a giant sculpture, a “cathedral” (23 m wide and 6 m tall), in the form of a pregnant woman lying on her back, which the audience could enter. Inside, visitors encountered an aquarium full of goldfish, a two-seated sofa for lovers, a bar, an exhibition with paintings, a small cinema that showed a Greta Garbo movie, a slide for kids, and many other surprises. Niki de Saint Phalle created her Nanas in various shapes and sizes from 1964 onwards. The inspiration for these works came from her friend Clarice Rivers, who was pregnant at the time. The Nanas bear witness to Saint Phalle’s belief in the divine nature of women and are frequently taken to represent a feminist perspective in her art."

Nicki de St Phalle big She A monument installation inspired me in the development of our set design, in having this maternal figure hanging above our two performers (creating the triptych together) this abstract form of creation, motherhood and life. The representation of the mother above her children, englobing them, creating them and them going back to her always. The forms, the organic shapes, the possibility to enter this massive structure is really what inspired me in Nicki St Phalle’s work.

Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely , She – A Cathedral, Moderna Museet, 1966

Research

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