Photos by: Jessica Maurer

Gallery 4

the motherhood that wasn't

Cecilia Sordi Campos

roomsheet

Motherhood and fertility have been extensively represented in creative practice for both their pictorial qualities and in the documentation of lived experiences. These representations continue to play an important role in shaping public perceptions of womanhood, while infertility is underrepresented, silenced or deemed contentious – often framed in terms of lack or failure.

The project titled the motherhood that wasn’t is grounded in Sordi Campos’ experiences of infertility and severe endometriosis. Her experience as an infertile Brazilian-born woman with both Afro-Brazilian and European ancestry leads her to explore what this signifies in social and cultural contexts.

Sordi Campos recognises that endometriosis and infertility issues are complex, affecting those who are born with a female reproductive apparatus, and others who desire to experience motherhood. When using terms such as womanhood and motherhood, Sordi Campos speaks from her own representative subject position as a biologically assigned female and self-identifying woman, possessing a body that menstruated and, if fertile, would give birth as a woman. This is the natural outcome of contextualising and drawing from her personal experiences, however, she acknowledges that others also experience infertility and endometriosis from other gendered perspectives.

Using her own menstrual blood as a drawing medium, Sordi Campos a to uncover ways in which it can be used as an aesthetic, political expression that serves as a physical record of catharsis - a mourning over the choice she was unable to make rationally, the choice her own body took from her.

With the making of this project, Sordi Campos seeks to uncover possibilities for imagining the infertile womb as nevertheless capable of alternative forms of creation outside of the paradigms of birthing and mothering, thus contributing an affective, empathic response to an issue that is subjugated by shame and underrepresented in the creative and public spheres.