During my research, I came across the book ‘Chicken Soup and the Midwife on Four Wheels’ by Monica Trettel, a work that collects the testimony of one of the last midwives in South Tyrol who assists with home birth. And I discovered many things I did not know about my own body, and how much wisdom it is capable of at the moment of childbirth. I became aware of how many choices we delegate to others, and how giving life is no longer a theme in our daily lives. Yet, it is the action, the passage, the doorway that brings us here, into life, all of us, without exception.
I wondered how to talk about such a complex and necessary subject, and to my aid came French artist Agnès Varda (1928-2019) with her work ‘Quelques Veuves de Noirmoutier’ (A Few Widows of Noirmoutier), an installation on a museum wall of twelve video-portraits of widowed women and men sharing their experience.
One of these is the artist herself, but she is the only one who does not speak. Viewers have the choice of which story they want to connect with, and in doing so the artist creates a possible bridge between the subject and the viewer.
I choose as well to let the women speak directly to the viewer, interviewing three of them, including my dear friend Isabelle. All three with different but complementary stories of childbirth.
The decision to organise the installation in the shape of a circle is closely connected to the concept of the Vase, which I have explored in parallel in recent years.
The Vase is a container that welcomes, offers space to hold and release.
The Circle is the mouth of the Vase, and the Vase is the empty Space par excellence.
The woman, unlike the man, lives her life more or less aware of having an empty space inside her, the womb, ready to host a new life. The concept of the two and therefore of the other is inherent in the nature of woman.
The Circle, therefore, creates space for this theme.