Belinda Kochanowska
My Flesh is Your Flesh
Germination, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Art and Motherhood as Ontic Equivalents Dr Laini Burton Art and Motherhood is a difficult theme to advance without invoking sighs of boredom, or polite but distant looks from those who simply cannot relate. Broaching pregnancy and motherhood through art requires certain fortitude to ensure one is not reduced to the maternal body. Yet it is these very experiences that manifest the result seen in Belinda Kochanowska’s visceral series My Flesh is Your Flesh. Drawing equivocal reactions of horror and fascination, Kochanowska’s images echo the moments of pregnancy that are fraught with terrors of unhealthy children, post-natal depression and parental anxiety. With their chimera that swim in and out, babies with monstrous deformities, flayed organs and reproductive flora that seem to engulf each scene, it is easy to perceive the myriad gestational fears possessed by mothers-to-be and emphasizes the psychic dimension of pregnancy as a state of extreme vulnerability, trepidation and aching hope. Spliced together in a kind of mitosis, the images burst forth from barely contained frames that mark the boundary between life and death, being and not being, self and other; their biological eruptions attesting to the force of life driving Kochanowska’s work which ultimately seeks to expand the subjectivity of pregnancy and motherhood. Indeed the title of the series raises interesting questions for notions of self and other in the creation of life.
While Kochanowska’s flesh is crucial in ascertaining a distinct selfhood—that which is My Flesh—she clearly distinguishes her flesh as belonging to but not being an others—or, that which is Your Flesh. In doing so, the artist acknowledges that she is the locus of creation while being differentiated from it. At their very core, Kochanowska’s photo-collages represent the sudden and lucid knowledge of ones own mortality, seized at the point of giving life. There is a detectable melancholy or kind of suspended mourning in these works, which meditate on an imagined and unknown future. Yet even more obvious is the way the artist sublimates the loss of what once was, and revels in the potentiality of what may come to be; that is, a space shared with her daughter, a space of intersubjectivity. Fundamentally changing bodies and lives, child rearing is an incredible journey. The scars borne of this life event can ‘write’ the artist’s body in new and challenging ways, inscribing upon it another identity; not a new identity—women do not lose themselves to childbirth or motherhood—but rather, another layer, an ontic addition to an already complex and rich existence as an artist.
Dr Laini Burton is Lecturer, Digital Media at the Queensland College of Art. Her research interests centre on body politics, bio-art and design, fashion theory, film and new media installation, performance and body/spatial relations.
Incubation, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Aftermath, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Seed, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Deliverance, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
The Eden of My Flesh, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Fruition, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
Birth, 2014, Archival Pigment Print
“My Flesh is Your Flesh” In the series “My Flesh is Your Flesh”, Kochanowska uses an intuitive and self-reflexive process of photo-collage to express her psychological, spiritual and physical experience of pregnancy and motherhood. Kochanowska draws from 16th, 17th and 18th century anatomical, botanical and natural history illustration to construct works teaming with fleshy distortions, flora, fauna and fantastical locations. Alternative mythologies are presented that are at once joyous, surreal, organic and deformed, blossoming with life, yet also brimming with a haunting disquiet.
Biography Belinda Kochanowska is an emerging photo media artist based in Brisbane, Australia. Under the mentorship of the Queensland Centre for Photography, Kochanowska’s practice frequently explores issues of memory, identity and physicality. She has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions in Australia and los angeles. Kochanowska also works as the Executive Officer for the Queensland Centre for Photography.
Dedication For my daughter, Lillian Kochanowska.
www.belindakochanowska.com
Belinda Kochanowska acknowledges the support of the Queensland Centre for Photography. Copyright 2014: Belinda Kochanowska This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review, no part may be reproduced without written permission Front Cover: Bounty, 2014, Archival Pigment Print Back Cover, In Utero, 2014, Archival Pigment Print