When and why did people start having sex and giving birth in a missionary position?
What links forceps and speculums?
Why did women begin shaving as a ritual before mating and as a presumed prerequisite for childbirth?
At what point did society begin to normalise painful sex and abuse?
With the desire to create new layers of awareness, crucial in this work is the reconciliation of the history of the medicalisation of childbirth with the history of the moralisation and repression of sexuality, long kept apart. From the rise of Christianity and the coalition between Church and medicine; through the age of Puritanism; to western Feminist and Queer revolutions, and technological developments, a history of sexuality and childbirth combined becomes not just an academic exploration but a deeply personal investigation into the systemic patterns that shape both public and private experiences.
By drawing on the intersection of visual and live art with somatic practices, this research challenges conventional notions of femininity and masculinity, seeking to reclaim demonised behaviours, body autonomy and radical subjectivity. In a world that pushes detachment from the body and its pleasures, enslaves it to capitalistic rhythms, and disrupts a felt sense of identity under patriarchal conditioning, this is an invitation to return to the body. Listen to its wisdom and use the force of birth, its contractions and impulses to walk a transformative path to reimagining sex, birth, and liberation.
The book concludes with a creative embodied exploration of these themes between Dyana Gravina and contemporary artists Dagmara Bilon, Amy Dignam, Leni Dothan, Laima Leyton, Kadie Salmon, Khaoula B Karaweigh and Stefania Zocco.
Dyana Gravina (Italy) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, Birth Doula, activist, mover, and community builder who lives and works in London. She is the founding director of Procreate Project and the Mother House Studios. For over a decade, Gravina has developed curatorial and activist practices that push the boundaries of what we showcase, where we showcase it and how people experience it. Their interdisciplinary artistic and socially engaged practices highlight themes including politics of migration and class, intergenerational feminist collective organising, care, sexualities and genealogies, pushing for decentralised networks of knowledge sharing and collective memories.
Gravina completed her MA Gender Sexuality and Culture at Birkbeck University. Their performance actions, performative lectures, writing and images, have been seen and heard in the UK and internationally, collaborating with East Street Arts, Wellcome Collection, The Science Gallery London, The New York Times, Venice International Performance Art Week, Institute Centre of Photography ICP ( NYC), Art Basel / Richard Saltoun Gallery, Minusoffspace (Vienna), Unit London, Menoparkas Gallery (Kaunas), Gruentaler9 (Berlin).
THIS BOOK IS CURRENTLY A PRE-ORDER. COPIES ARE EXPECTED TO POST OUT AT THE END OF MARCH.
