During her two pregnancies, German artist and performer Annegret Soltau documented how her body changed with video and photography. By scratching, cutting, collaging, and stitching, the artist altered and reconfigured the negatives. The work is an expression of a fragmented identity and also juxtaposes the roles of woman, artist, and mother. Auf dem Gebärtisch [On the birthing table] is a photographic triptych that portrays the naked body of the pregnant artist. Sitting on a delivery table, the figure gradually emerges from a white sheet that is draped around it like a shroud. This photomontage raises questions about medically assisted reproduction, and the physical body is both the medium and subject of this intervention.
Throughout much of Western modernity, pregnancy and motherhood were strictly confined to the private sphere. Breaking free from these societal conventions was central to the feminist struggles of the 1970s, which were driven by women’s urge to reclaim control over their own bodies. Annegret Soltau was one of the few artists, who in the 1980s in the context of body art, engaged with these subjects based on her own experience as an artist and a mother. Her works show a new representation of the female body from a feminist angle, while at the same time emphasizing the physical and symbolic violence that it endures.
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