Sculptor Marc Quinn has done it again. Famous for representing the beauty of pregnancy in a disabled body without arms or legs (Alison Lapper), Quinn's latest exhibition looks at the internal view of the womb; 9 pink marble fetuses enrobed in a sort of maternal 'pipework' at London's White Cube gallery. A way of representing the mysterious baby 'bump', Quinn was inspired by the reactions to Alison Lapper's body shape as 'disfigured' and not 'pregnant'. Quinn says:
"There are nine sculptures altogether but there isn't one for each month because really the most interesting changes are at the beginning. The series does continue until birth. In the final sculpture, the baby is upside down and about to drop out -- just before the fall as it were.''
Quinn's comparison is far too simplistic. Whereas Alison Lapper is an actual woman, embodied as pregnant in his earlier work, the marble fetuses are without 'mothers'. Whereas Quinn is attempting to show the 'evolution' of human life right up until a 'baby' is ready to 'drop out' (interesting choice of words), there is no 'mother' embodied to do the 'dropping' as it were. Quinn's work is radical in that he tries to confront individuals with their own strange beginning as fetuses to counter the judgement of disabled bodies in the spirit of Lapper. Yet, Quinn never mentions that in order to 'make visible what is hidden' beneath a mother's skin, the mother cannot exist. This is precisely why 3D/4D ultrasonography is so powerful. If the mother's body remained present in the 'photo', the fetus would not seem like a separate person. The pink marble fetuses only reinvoke the traditional scientific and cultural paradigm of personhood as disembodied and masculine.
More images here: http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/evolution/lga/
