Alexandra Neuman
The Collective Womb
El Jardin del Paraíso, NYC, June 2024
601 Artspace, NYC, July 2024
The Collective Womb is a matriarchal creation story reframing abortion as an ecological redistribution of life-force. Staged on a large mound of dirt, the performance celebrates the macro-scale creative power of our planet and the micro-scale creative power of each individual womb. This existential power has long been a threat to patriarchal control, leaving fertile soils and reproductive bodies subject to similar forms of labor exploitation and micromanagement. In contrast to the long-standing image of a disembodied father-god moralizing human beings from the sky, the mother-goddess offers an alternative image of a terrestrial deity that is simultaneously nurturing, erotic, and deadly. This project taps into a queer mythological realm in which abortion is recognized as a natural part of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is in this space of joyful communal consciousness-raising that the boundaries between fiction and reality can be blurred, and a matriarchal worldview can slip into existence.
Read More in Hyperallergic: An Abortion-Oriented Cosmology Tale Debuts in NYC