Laura Yuile, Once you care, you’re future, 2019. Performance commissioned by the Birth Rites Collection, King’s College, London.Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Rebecca Lennon.
Birth Rites Collection: Imagining an Activist Art Collection
in Transnational Visual Activism for Women’s Reproductive Rights: My Body, My Choice
Edited By Basia Sliwinska
Routledge, 2024
Focusing on art practices that advocate, raise consciousness, and educate about the human right to reproductive health, this book analyses and compares forms of feminist artivism to interrogate bodily rights while closely examining the lived experiences of women and their right of free choice.
Chapter abstract
Birth Rites Collection (BRC) is a unique UK-based collection of contemporary art about childbirth. Its aim is to increase the visibility of birth and maternity in the art field. The collection’s subject area has become a site of increased political and social attention through the ongoing transnational battles over reproductive rights (including birth justice) and increased concern for traditionally feminised socially reproductive labour. This chapter takes BRC as a case study to ask what an activist art collection might be and do. How might an activist collection represent concerns, create community, and contribute to cultural and academic discourse? At a key moment in its trajectory, I propose that BRC develop its focus on birth to hold dedicated space for the full spectrum of experiences of reproductive bodies beyond that of live birth, taking a cue from the work of full spectrum doulas. I discuss care as crucial for the full spectrum of reproductive experiences and their representations through the ‘art of birth’. Radical care for artistic representations of experiences such as birthing, miscarriage, or abortion that are often silenced and invisibilised reveals itself as activist.
Link to the volume here. My open access chapter is available as a PDF here.
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