Alleingeburt/Unassisted Birth, 2012
Four Colour Screen Print on Fabriano Paper 1/4, 101cm x 135 cm framed under glass.

Раждане с оргазъм Birth with Orgasm II , 2012
Four Colour screen print on fabriano, 1/5, 115.5 x 166 cm framed with glass.

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.