Umbilical Self-portrait from MiNuShu on Vimeo.

With this documental self-portrait (without Photoshop or any kind of image manipulation) of myself giving birth I want to challenge most of maternities in films, advertising and all of art history.

These maternities re-enforce the stereotypes that impart from heterosexual masculine fantasies, in which exist the duality of the mother/whore, making sacred all that has to do with the “mother” (maternity with veil included).

With these photos I wanted to show a maternity from my experience in which to give birth: I open, I transform, I bleed, I scream and I smile. I am standing up, with the placenta still inside me, linked to my baby by the umbilical cord and I decide when to photograph the birth.

I am the protagonist. I am a hero.

By giving birth I take off my “cultural” veil. My maternity is not virginal, not aseptic. I am the archetype of the primal woman, the woman beast that has nothing prohibited. I show a maternity not seen through the eyes of Eve (the divine punishment ”you will give birth with the pain of your body”) but seen through the eyes of Lucy (the earliest hominid found to date).

Right now I am mounting the MORE STORE exhibition in Zagreb which will open on Oct. 4th—it will be part of a festival called “Extravagant bodies, extravagant age”.

More of Ana’s work: “Cesarean, Beyond the Wound” & Other Life Images.

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Assist Ed: Renée Picard/Ed: Sara Crolick