Wearing the Trousers Makes the Baby Come (2002) is an experimental performance film that presents the maternal body and its physical stories. It reveals dissonance and ambivalence between body, text and image.
In this film the artist coated her body in lard whilst telling stories about the body’s scars from childbearing and childbirth.
The title of the work was an old phrase used in childbirth in which a male garment is believed to encourage the birth of the baby. The phrase is used with the deepest irony and plays with notions of gender roles and the possibility of creating opposites that can pull and push meaning into creation. The work endeavours to direct the gaze towards lived reality, with the body as text to be read and re-written.
The female body is dual and multiple; sexualized and a site of maternity. The accompanying recorded spoken texts are personal yet universal, tracing the scars of the childbearing experience on the body with additional poetic and theoretical references from Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray.
The film can be viewed upon request.
Writing about this project was later included in a publication by Blud Zero Collective with Poppy Jackson
Ezine Issue 1 Vagina as Autonomous Zone, 2013
See more projects that explore mother’s body.