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Drawing from a vast library of recent online birth videos,
Helen Knowles appropriates imagery of women in the
transcendental state of birth. Sourced from films posted
on YouTube by women empowered by their experience,
Knowles’ striking prints attempt to unpick cultural attitudes
to birth and probe the difficulty audiences may have with
certain kinds of imagery. YouTube portraits consist of seven
large-scale screen prints. Using an innovative printing
technique of exposing a screen with a digital projector,
Knowles creates images that oscillate between the figurative
and abstraction. By selecting footage that portrays the
women’s euphoria, Knowles attempts to capture the intense
emotion through a heightened colour contrast, challenging
the separation between women as mothers and women
as sexual entities.
Helen Knowles. 2012.
Four Colour Screen Print on Fabriano Paper