Alix Deane

In Womb study I address issues of expected female roles within motherhood. The repetition signifies a continuous search for a connection to the maternal spirit. The multiplicity is obsessive and overbearing, but presents itself calm and contained. Variation of soft blues and whites in each form mimic moments of closeness and distance as well as presence and absence. Cyanotype, an alternative photographic process that exposes via sunlight and develops in water, is used due to its parallels to the synthesis between water and sun that sustains life on earth.

Multiple silhouetted images, or photograms, of my body are deconstructed and transformed into a new version of body. The laborious process of making begins with several large sheets of white cotton gauze. The gauze is then coated, exposed, washed, torn, and hand formed into individual figures that reference an empty human womb space. The process of making is both violent and mending. The white is where my body once lay and the blue is the intimate space around it. The white of the forms represents absence and the blue symbolizes the energy that guides us through life. 

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Cyanotype on fabric, salt

2018