Intracorporeal Entanglement, and other provocations of the gestating body

Abstract

To gestate is to exist in a mode of corporeal ambiguity. The gestating woman is intimately entwined with another, embodying a condition of physiological and philosophical entanglement as she brings another body, another being, into existence from within the interior of her body. In this research I seek to articulate the phenomenological significance and biological complexity of the gestating body in non-figurative works of art, pursuing this objective through a studio practice encompassing textiles, sculpture and drawing. Feminist works of art relating to the maternal tend to address issues of maternal identity and the labour of care, and to do this through figurative representations of the maternal body. In this research, I ask how bodily experiences of gestation might be articulated without direct representation of the body. I concentrate on three experiences of gestation: the experience of becoming round, of becoming multiple, and of imagining an interior bodily space. Through a practice-led research I developed techniques of bio-geometrical piecing and cane weaving to make sculptural objects suggestive of the gravid body and manipulated the material quality of transparency to conjure a sense of the ambiguity between the body of the gestating woman and that of the conceptus. I developed a methodological approach of making art in-situ as a parallel to the experience of the gestating woman, who is creating an organism that cannot be seen until it is born. The works of art resulting from this research facilitate an imaginative engagement with the gestating body and its significance, contributing to the fields of feminist art practice, feminist philosophies of phenomenology, and visual biological humanities.