Untitled (Feeding Through Space and Time)

Every month, the artist creates approximately 5.85 gallons of breast milk with her body, which is the volume shown in circulation. A meditation on invisible labor related to reproduction and care work, the installation was created as a reflection on the experience of pumping breast milk in the work place.

The breastpump, first patented in 1854, presents knotty potentials, both liberating and limiting. Its presence allows for the disentanglement of body and milk, which can simultaneously empower choice and obligate postpartum bodies back into the labor force with the assumption that all spectrums of society can balance the demands of paid work and care work.

Programmed to the rhythm of the artist’s own breast pump, the work also reflects the artist’s intimate experiences with this machine. Shortly after giving birth, the visual and sensory cues of a baby's suckle causes milk to be ejected from the breasts in a process called letdown. Over the course of pumping for months, the mechanical rhythmic sound of the pump began superseding the biological cues. Over time, the mechanical sound of the pump began triggering the letdown reflex from the artist’s body. Blurring boundaries between flesh and machine, unexpected intimacy is explored between the body, the pump, and the nourishment of the child. 



Video credit Brad Farwell.