MFA research project - The Language of Birth: Painting Of and From Birth.

Abstract:

‘The Language of Birth’ presents a personal investigation into the non-linguistic communicative potential of birth through a philosophical and studio-based approach. Addressing personal histories and experiences both of and from birth, the studio practice becomes a mode of embodied translation that seeks to examine psycho-social and biological understandings of birth and feminine subjectivity. The research is supported by an examination of the artist’s personal history as a birth photographer that fostered an embodied perception of birth. The project fits within a field of historical and contemporary phenomenological and psychoanalytical theory and amongst the diverse practices of artists addressing similar themes of birth, feminism and psychoanalysis in painting. Julia Kristeva’s feminist theory and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory provides theoretical context to the exploration of the sensory and communicative potential of painting from birth. Materials of birth and the body such as breastmilk, placenta and suede that relate to themes of abjection, corporeality, embodiment and feminism, in combination with traditional painting techniques, results in a body of work that seeks to create new socio-cultural and biological understandings of birth through painting.