MASP

In the first half of the 1980s, the feminist artist Judy Chicago invited around 150 women from different parts of the world to narrate, by means of paintings and embroideries, the physical and emotional experience of becoming a mother. If, on the one hand, the artist’s aim was to celebrate the capacity of women to gestate life and give birth; on the other hand, she wanted to expose a point of view that is practically absent in the history of art. This ambiguity is evident in Birth Tear/Tear, a print version of the work: from afar, the warm hues of the red and pink background, lit by the small details in gold, announce an optimistic and hearty atmosphere. However, from up close, the sense of well-being becomes diffuse: three human specters, linked through the mouth to the same structure, seem to suck vital energy from the mother’s throat and breast. A tear runs down the face of the woman who feels consumed by her offspring and the efforts of a new birth. In the center, between her open legs, we see the tear resulting from an episiotomy — a surgical incision into the perineum aimed at enlarging the birth canal — which is often made without the consent of the woman giving birth. The lines irradiating from the head of the female figure amplify her suffering and end up entangled in a new ball of the umbilical cord, in an image that portrays the condition of a woman/mother who still does not have rights over her own body.

— Regina Teixeira de Barros, Coordinating Curator, Collection Curator, MASP, 2023

---