Performance work dealing with birthing, either inward or outward, stands as the powerful and cosmic connection between the female body and the earth. Ideas of power and witchcraft come into play in the following selected works, as artists subvert the notion that women are weak and inferior. As Julia Kristeva explains in Powers of Horror, “Fear of the archaic mother turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power. It is this power, a dreaded one, that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing” (77). Using birth as a form of art is a direct confrontation, as it is one way that the female body is “othered”; the female body passes through cycles, changes frequently. Therefore it is not to be trusted. 



Interior Scroll, 1975

Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll was performed twice in 1975. Each performance consisted of a ritual preparation and a reading. Schneemann entered the room, undressed, and wrapped herself in one sheet as she covered a table in another. After dropping the sheet covering her, Schneemann painted the contours of her body and face. She then stood on the table, and began extracting the scroll from her vagina and reading from it. The texts each focused on the ways patriarchal society treats women.

In Imaging her Erotics, a collection of Schneemann’s essays and works, the artist explains that Interior Scroll was largely driven and inspired by studies of Goddess artifacts and symbolism of ancient cultures. She first talks about “vulvic space”, and the way that the Cro-Magnon people used the serpent to symbolize “the cosmic energy of the female womb, which protected and nourished the embryo, as [the Cro-Magnon] believed the ocean originally did the earth” (Schneemann 153). This finding also lead Schneemann to think of the vagina as “the source of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation… [a way by which] my ancestor measured her menstrual cycles, pregnancies, lunar observations, agricultural notations- the origins of time factoring, of mathematical equivalencies, of abstract relations” (Schneemann 153). In the work, she equates womb space to a source of power. This way of thinking ties directly to ideas of witchcraft, the only religion in which power is viewed as coming from within rather than an external force. Witch hunts throughout history are just one example of the way feminine power is met with hysteria, fear, and panic.  

María Evelia Marmolejo’s Anonimo 3 broke out of the typical idea of an “art space”, and was performed privately near the Cauca River in Colombia. It is described as “a sort of apology for all the pollution that humanity had created on earth”. The artist bandaged herself in gauze and “performed a healing ritual [in which] she gave herself a vaginal washing meant to fertilize the ground and get rid of the pollution”
(Hammer)

"Marmolejo also produced "Anonimo 3", which spoke on the need to focus on the environment. This was a private 15-minute performance that occurred near the Cauca River in Colombia, meant as a sort of apology for all of the pollution that humanity had created on earth, as was represented by the river. In this performance, Marmolejo covered herself in gauze and performed a healing ritual where she gave herself a vaginal washing meant to fertilize the ground and get rid of the pollution" (Hammer Museum).

Marmolejo becomes a healer in this performance. She becomes a kind of heroic figure; her body has the capacity to heal thousands of years of damage and harm done to the earth. The fact that the healing comes from the vagina is significant as this is the part of the female body that is cited as making one “inferior”. In Powers of Horror: Essays on Abjection, Julia Kristeva writes, “‘I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which I claim to establish myself’” (pg 3). By expelling herself outward, Marmolejo is not only healing the physical earth but also attempting to make amends for the cruelty with which humankind treats its home. 

Janet Toro’s Azogue performance is a kind of backwards birthing. She takes the front page of Journal, a newspaper owned by the Edwards family. As Toro explains,

"The Edwards family not only owns this newspaper, but also owns several diaries, which currently sum up to about twenty. They also own other companies in the banking sector, lumber industries, media, etc. Agustín Edwards Eastman traveled in the 70s to the United States in order to meet Donald Kendall (Pepsi Cola) and Richard Helms (CIA) and later with Henri Kissinger to organize the coup plot against the government of Salvador Allende, an act of sedition. The CIA provided a huge sum to Edwards for these purposes. These facts remain unpunished!” (Toro).

In this piece, the artist slowly inserts the front page of the Journal into her vagina. This is meant to be metaphorical of the inverted uterus. Rather than bringing something to light, the inverted uterus hides something. In the way that an act of sedition is hidden or let slide, Toro uses her body to hide the paper. The female body, hidden in political matters and positions of power, made to feel unheard, is now changing that narrative by performing the inverted uterus. Although the paper is “returned to the shadows”, it is actually made much more visible through this act (Azogue).