The Shared Gaze: Reimagining Sexual Reproduction through Visual Arts Practices
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal College of Art
Department Name: School of Art and Humanities
Abstract
Considering Birth Rites Collection as an 'active agent', I want to explore the potential of what it can do: contextualise practices, bring marginalised experiences to the forefront of discussions, physically take up space within an institution, disrupt spaces, even create productive antagonisms.
During my PhD, I will critically analyse the way that power acts in complex and often invisible ways on medicalised subjects and groups. Through research and practice, I intend to work on the intersections between the maternal and critical discourses around sickness and disability. I am also committed to continuing to address race-based health inequalities in (maternal) healthcare.
Guided by an intersectional feminist framework, I will draw on disciplines such as the medical humanities and critical disability studies. I am committed to making a politics of care increasingly central to how I work and believe that this award is a suitable context in which to develop and reflect on the relational and material implications of my curatorial work in this field.
During my PhD, I will critically analyse the way that power acts in complex and often invisible ways on medicalised subjects and groups. Through research and practice, I intend to work on the intersections between the maternal and critical discourses around sickness and disability. I am also committed to continuing to address race-based health inequalities in (maternal) healthcare.
Guided by an intersectional feminist framework, I will draw on disciplines such as the medical humanities and critical disability studies. I am committed to making a politics of care increasingly central to how I work and believe that this award is a suitable context in which to develop and reflect on the relational and material implications of my curatorial work in this field.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Hermione Wiltshire (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Nora Heidorn (Student) |
| Title | Curated online event: Being Horizontal: Vulnerability, Interdependence and Resistance |
| Description | Being Horizontal: Vulnerability, Interdependence and Resistance, as part of Confabulations: Art Practice, Art History, Critical Medical Humanities, online, 2022 The standard enlightenment representation of the human body is of a singular, upright, able-bodied man, gazing forward. Starting from a subjective and partial selection of contemporary artworks and research images, this curatorial project wants to pay caring attention to images of reclined bodies. We encounter reclined bodies in different situations in our visual cultures, including persons sleeping or resting, having sex, the unwell, injured or deceased. Visual tropes include the reclined nude, the fallen soldier, the psychoanalysis patient, and the birthing woman. Being horizontal, and especially being looked at and imaged in positions of recline, is often associated with feminised and/or racialised powerlessness. Deliberately assuming a horizontal position in front of others can also, as the complex works grouped in this project reveal, challenge, subvert, and politicise dynamics of vulnerability and power. Inspired by Adrianna Cavarero's Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, "Being Horizontal" pays critical and caring attention to images of reclined bodies and explores what individual and collective orientations and movements out of the vertical plane and into varying degrees of incline might indicate about being in relation, about interdependency and care. For example, how might the simple but charged acts of reclining, lounging, collapsing, or reversing be reimagined as critiques of the neoliberal drives for efficiency, productivity, speed, and independence? This event explores these questions with particular attention to the embodied dynamics of verticality and horizontality in clinical encounters with a critical medical humanities audience. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Audience engagement, later invitation to give an interview about the project (published online) and to curate an exhibition the next year. |
| URL | https://confabulationsdotorg.wordpress.com/current-programme/being-horizontal-vulnerability-interdep... |
| Title | Exhibition: Being Horizontal and accompanying engagement events |
| Description | Being Horizontal / Sínte Tickets: Free, Unticketed Nora Heidorn & Lynne Kouassi, Ketty La Rocca, David McGovern, Julie Morrissy, Harold Offeh Curated by Nora Heidorn The standard enlightenment representation of the human body is of a singular, upright, able-bodied man, gazing forward. This group exhibition pays caring attention to reclined bodies and to bodies inclined towards each other, favouring a model of the human as interdependent and reliant. We encounter reclined bodies in different situations in our lives, in images, and stories: persons sleeping or resting, having sex, the unwell, injured or deceased. Common tropes include the reclined nude, the fallen soldier, the psychoanalysis patient, and the birthing woman. Being horizontal, and especially being looked at and imaged in positions of recline, is often associated with feminised and racialised powerlessness. Deliberately assuming a horizontal position in front of others can also challenge, subvert, and politicise dynamics of vulnerability and power. This exhibition explores what moving out of the vertical plane and into varying degrees of inclination might indicate about being in relation, about interdependency and care. For example, how might the simple but charged acts of lounging, reclining, or leaning be reimagined as critiques of the neoliberal drives for efficiency, productivity, speed, and independence? |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Public engagement, artistic exchange, opportunities for other artists to exhibit, workshops and school tours... |
| URL | https://projectartscentre.ie/event/being-horizontal-sinte/ |
| Title | Labour Orgy |
| Description | An artistic installation inside a hotel room in Zurich. Lynne Kouassi's room at the Alma Hotel explores the paradox of the "Immaculate Conception" and addresses the intersectionality of feminism and anti-racism. Prints show drawings of diverse birthing positions, as well as accompanying persons and their relational roles in the birth process. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Engagement with non-traditional art audiences, presentation of usable artworks outside of a traditional exhibition space. Discussions and new perspectives amongst audiences. |
| URL | https://noelzurich.com/en/rooms/alma-hotel/ |
| Title | Touching Matters of Care ('Prorace' cervical cap, 1915-20) |
| Description | Touching Matters of Care ('Prorace' cervical cap, 1915-20) by Nora Heidorn appropriates and intervenes in a 3D scan of the "Prorace" cervical cap. The cap is a barrier contraceptive from the 1920s that was heavily promoted by Dr Marie Stopes, the feminist pioneer of birth control in the UK. The interactive digital work stages the 'Prorace' cap and its attendant history of the UK birth control movement and Stopes' eugenic feminism as a 'Matter of Care': a complex thing that requires our careful attention. The 3D work invites users to become proximate to this object by digitally handling it and to ask critical questions about its meanings. The cursor hand wears a latex glove reminiscent of both the clinic and the archive. Thousands of married women from the 1920s onwards encountered the 'Prorace' cap in Stopes' birth control clinics, where they were fitted and learned to use it. Today, the cap and it's related documents are encountered in museological and archival spaces that require similar protocols of contact and hygiene. This project was commissioned by Birth Rites Collection with support from the Arts Council England. It was developed out of Nora Heidorn's PhD research at the Royal College of Art and was made with creative technologist Jinia Tasnin. The original 3D scan of the 'Prorace' cap was produced by the Science Museum, London, where the object is on display. The cap is owned by the Wellcome Collection, London. With thanks to Helen Knowles and Hermione Wiltshire for accompanying this project. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Online user engagement, a talk at the Wellcome Collection, London |
| URL | https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/noraheidorn |
| Description | Presentations for summer school |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I presented my research to the Birth Rites Collection Summer School participants. I received questions and contributed to the programme of the summer schools. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/summer-school |
| Description | Talk at the Wellcome Collection |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Marie Stopes: Feminism, Eugenics and Birth Control, Event at the Wellcome Collection, London, 2022 Hear curator and researcher Nora Heidorn in conversation with historian Claire Jones about the life and legacy of Marie Stopes. They will acknowledge Stopes' work helping women to access vital information and birth control and also her attempts to define who should be allowed to have children. There will be opportunities for you to ask questions and there will be original materials from our historic collections available to view. The talk was professionally recorded and is available on the Youtube channel of the Wellcome Collection. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://wellcomecollection.org/events/YzMBFBEAAEAKhgTt |