Combining text and image, My Birth, by Columbus, Ohio–based artist Carmen Winant (born 1983), interweaves photographs of the artist's mother giving birth to her three children with found images of other, anonymous, women undergoing the same experience. As the pictorial narrative progresses, from labor through delivery, the women's postures increasingly blend into one another, creating a collective body that strains and releases in unison. In addition to the photographic sequence, My Birth includes an original text by the artist exploring the shared, yet solitary, ownership of the experience of birth. My Birth asks: What if birth, long shrouded and parodied by popular culture, was made visible? What if a comfortable and dynamic language existed to describe it? What if, in picturing the process so many times over and insisting on its very subjectivity, we understood childbirth and its representation to be a political act?
Above: A spread from 'Carmen Winant: My Birth.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Elephant
The work is a breathtaking insight into the life-changing experience of birth, something that, as Winant explains, is rarely talked about or seen in the public sphere.
Hyperallergic
Alicia Kroell
Winant directly addresses our general discomfort with the physical aspect of childbirth, forcing viewers to look directly at it, the universal starting point. With images of intense, pure pain, the installation feels like an affront; but it is, at its core, something basic, repeated daily.
Wallpaper*
Gives a vital clarity to a universal experience that often goes overlooked.
BOMB
Jen Schwarting
Informed by the legacy of feminist artists who use found images and documentary footage in a research-based practice.
STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.
FROM THE BOOK
Introduction, by Carmen Winant
Very few people asked me about my birth. The delivery of another human being: weren’t they curious about its effect?
Had I asked other women about their labors? I could only recall asking my own mother when I became pregnant myself. The interest had been founded in a spirit of fear—a preparatory measure—not in generosity.
If the questions do come, they are prefaced with trepidation: unless this is too personal for you?
Most people, including other women, are uneasy at the topic. Voices lower, bodies lean out. It is di cult to address suffering, and for the most part I understand their silence as graciousness. Still, I want to say: anguish is only one in a range of dramatic physical sensations that occur; it was more than the pain endured. I want to reassure: my body split open and poured out in front of strangers. I shed any nervousness on this topic along with the solids and fluids. I want to beg: just ask me.
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.75 x 12 in. / 120 pgs / 169 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9781999814441 PUBLISHER: Image Text Ithaca/SPBH Editions AVAILABLE: 6/19/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: SDNR40 PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Combining text and image, My Birth, by Columbus, Ohio–based artist Carmen Winant (born 1983), interweaves photographs of the artist's mother giving birth to her three children with found images of other, anonymous, women undergoing the same experience. As the pictorial narrative progresses, from labor through delivery, the women's postures increasingly blend into one another, creating a collective body that strains and releases in unison. In addition to the photographic sequence, My Birth includes an original text by the artist exploring the shared, yet solitary, ownership of the experience of birth. My Birth asks: What if birth, long shrouded and parodied by popular culture, was made visible? What if a comfortable and dynamic language existed to describe it? What if, in picturing the process so many times over and insisting on its very subjectivity, we understood childbirth and its representation to be a political act?
