40 – 42+2, 2007
Two weeks and two days
For this project, based on ideas of control and territory, I have used my belly as a drawing surface. The state of a pregnant woman is often a time of self-observation and of emotional fragility. I wanted to treat this experience outside the cliché of “love and happiness” and to play with the notion of control in an unfamiliar territory. Without judging the event as good or bad, I wanted to take the experience and exploit it for what it is: a unique physical condition, which only lasts for a short time.
During pregnancy, a woman’s body is an ambiguous territory. It belongs to the woman, to the foetus, as well as to the public (who often find the round tummy irresistible to touch). In drawing on my belly, I am trying to materialise the invisible boundaries, to take back my body and to mark my territory by redefining my own borders. This is one way of taking control, of influencing the spectator and of pretending to possess an authority on the physical changes that are happening in and to my body during pregnancy.
The unborn child is a common ground for the personal memories and hopes of each individual unrelated to the specific body of the pregnant woman. As the round belly is a universal symbol of the globe, I am also inviting people to leave their mark on this virgin territory: providing the opportunity to take possession of the symbolic-future, anticipations, dreams and all newness that a baby yet to come, can represent in today’s society.
Two weeks and two days
For this project, based on ideas of control and territory, I have used my belly as a drawing surface. The state of a pregnant woman is often a time of self-observation and of emotional fragility. I wanted to treat this experience outside the cliché of “love and happiness” and to play with the notion of control in an unfamiliar territory. Without judging the event as good or bad, I wanted to take the experience and exploit it for what it is: a unique physical condition, which only lasts for a short time.
During pregnancy, a woman’s body is an ambiguous territory. It belongs to the woman, to the foetus, as well as to the public (who often find the round tummy irresistible to touch). In drawing on my belly, I am trying to materialise the invisible boundaries, to take back my body and to mark my territory by redefining my own borders. This is one way of taking control, of influencing the spectator and of pretending to possess an authority on the physical changes that are happening in and to my body during pregnancy.
The unborn child is a common ground for the personal memories and hopes of each individual unrelated to the specific body of the pregnant woman. As the round belly is a universal symbol of the globe, I am also inviting people to leave their mark on this virgin territory: providing the opportunity to take possession of the symbolic-future, anticipations, dreams and all newness that a baby yet to come, can represent in today’s society.
