Stavanger, Norway
Throughout my various childbirths and miscarriages, my body has produced multiple placentas. Yet until Christine Urdal’s exhibition Pust (Breath), I had never seen a placenta up close, not understood exactly how it connected to the umbilical cord, not visualized its webbed surface, not considered its rich variety of bloody hues. It says a lot about the treatment of women’s bodies in modern medicine, and in Western culture in general, that this extraordinary organ, utterly necessary to the production of human life, is so unknown, even to those who carry them. We are so squeamish, and so sexist. Urdal’s solution is a stunningly minimalist, nearly monochromatic installation of large- and medium-scale color photography, mostly on the wall but also built out as a sculptural table. Extremely sharp close-up images of a placenta are the primary subject, but a lone video presents a parallel from nature, the leaves of a maple tree blowing in the wind, in their seasonal autumn colors. The audio is wind but also the sound of blood pumping in the body, as is heard in any prenatal doctor’s visit. It isn’t sap flowing in a tree, but it could be.
—Lori Waxman, March 17, 12:42 PM