Performance artist Marilee Talkington wants to make a baby. And she wants to turn it into art. So she’s inviting an audience to witness this stage of her fertility treatment, which involves twice-daily self-administered hormone injections. Some of these will take place in public spaces around San Francisco, and will also be livestreamed for those of you who cannot make it to SF MOMA, the De Young Museum, the Exploratorium, or the Golden Gate Bridge on those dates.
She’s also inviting other women who are undergoing IVF to join her and choreograph their injections together. Make it a party.
Is this trivializing a perilous and intimate undertaking, inappropriately attention-seeking? Or an act of great audacity and imagination?
From her recent press release:
In this courageous real-time Performance Art work Marilee brings forward an empowering, and radical exploration into the issues of conceiving life. In publicly performing the still taboo, deeply personal and subrosa process of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), THE CREATIVE PROCESS breaks ground in the realm of performance and social dialogue about IVF, and redefines the meaning of “Life as Art”.
Encouraging transparency and demystification through baring her body and fertility journey, Marilee will become LIVING ART by literally taking her IVF hormone injections to the streets. This piece will take place over a 14 day period where every IVF injection will be visually accessible to the public and Live Streamed across the country on USTREAM. “There is so much isolation in this process. Even after 35 years of IVF procedures, people still have no idea what it truly involves and the intense highs and lows that women and couples go through. It’s about time to break this silence and taking ownership over this process inherently filled with uncertainty.”
On May 30th, 8 pm Marilee will do her first public injection at SOMArts as part of one of two full evening performance art pieces. During this performance, she will be unveiling her art installation inspired by a 1920’s broken down hospital room, which will be open to viewers for the duration of the two weeks. From May 30th-June 12th as the hormone injections begin to affect Marilee’s body, she will externalize her internal physical changes by transforming the old and distressed hospital installation into a vibrant and lush garden.
Read more about THE CREATIVE PROCESS: An IVF Living Art Piece Begins 5/30 – BWWVisual ArtsWorld
