"Reproductive wilderness," a term coined by Helen Hester in her book Xenofeminism, is the focus of an artistic project that delves into the interconnectedness of human and non-human elements in the process of gestation. This project seeks to transcend disciplinary boundaries, engaging with the political discourse surrounding motherhood and reproduction. . .

... the womb is a more than human space, giving room to the stranger and its mutational politics... mamals apart a seed that holds the embryo of a plant and the expanding uterus of the hen that stretches to push the egg out of the cloaca are each renditions of the gestating womb’s temporality, tactility, and fluidity...

With advancements of new technologies such as full surrogacy, IVF treatments, and genetically engineered artificial wombs, the womb will continue to be caught in the tension between the generic (creating more of the same) and generative (becoming a site for varies mutations). The questions remain: where (in whose bodies, politics, and economics) will the womb reside? and who (which variants/ actors/ genes) will form the materiality of the womb as a generative space?

Excerpt from Spatial Folders, Extraction a transcalar enquiry, Reproductive Wilderness, 2023, published by MIARD