PROJECT
REAL MOM
LONDON, 2021
This project can be considered as the artist’s protest toward illegal surrogacy as well as to reveal the authentic pain of pregnancy and parturition.
Nowadays, the rise of the commercial and uncommercial illegal surrogate industry offers an alternative way for couples who want to have descendants but have no intension to suffer from a 10-month pregnancy and take the risk of giving birth to a child. Based on the fact that lots of celebrities secretly adapt surrogacy to have offspring, the real problem arises when they choose to post their perfect body figure before and after their “pregnancy” on social media, due to their popularity, mainstream has created heat hashtags, such as #still keep girlishness during pregnant#. It starts a false cognation and overestimated of the public impression toward Motherhood. Such a unbearable pressure caused by society has already become the main reason that cause postpartum depression. Unfortunately, my older sister suffered from it after her parturition, combing my experience of taking care of her with my speciality in costume design, I created this project, to stand on her side, shout for her as well as all mothers suffer from it.
My older sister, Yuan, who just gave a birth at the end of 2019. But after that she got really serious Postpartum depression. She felt that women’s pregnancy process is now beautified by mainstream media, causing many people to ignore women’s real pain.
Then I did an interview with my older sister. I recorded our conversations and took notes. I use red to mark out those words that contain emotional feelings afterwards. In order to avoid making my sister more depressed, I just listen to her describe the whole thing without any judgement. Then I studied what I recorded and drew some body parts which my sister had always been difficult to face after giving a birth.
ILLUSTRATION
The costume is designed for a female character who’s not currently pregnant, with a flat belly and straight breasts. The silhouette of the costume is a wearable frame with a mother’s breasts during suckling period and a belly be covered with stretched skin texture made of latex attached to it.
OUTCOME
