Sordi Campos_Cecilia_ agua à luz.jpg

the motherhood that wasn’t
2020 - on going

I’m infertile, and my infertility issues both enchant and terrify me in equal parts.

The project the motherhood that wasn’t is grounded in the complexities of my experiences of infertility caused by endometriosis. My experience as a woman of colour who is unable to give birth leads me to a continuing preoccupation of what this signifies in social and cultural contexts.
Using my menstrual blood as a drawing medium, I aim to uncover ways in which it can be used as an aesthetic, political expression that serve as a physical record of catharsis - a mourning over the choice I was unable to make rationally, the choice my own body took from me.

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

água á luz
Animated digitised lumen print with
my menstrual blood,
snapdragon and stock flowers.
Buried on the 16th November 2022.
Unearthed and submerged in water
on the 28th November.
Re-buried on the 28th November.
Unburied on the 11th December 2022.
Animated digital image, 60sec