Birth Rites Collection Works

Belinda Kochanowska is an artist based in Australia. Kochanowska’s practice frequently explores issues of memory, identity and female physicality. She has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions in Australia, USA and UK. In the series "The Eden of my Flesh", Kochanowska uses an intuitive and self-reflexive process to visually communicate the neurodivergent experience of pregnancy and giving birth. This work was created during the pregnancy and shortly after the birth of her first child. Anatomical and natural history illustrations are manipulated to express the experience of birth. Alternative mythologies result - joyous, surreal, organic and deformed, blossoming with life, yet also brimming with a haunting disquiet. Kochanowska’s photocollages represent the sudden and lucid knowledge of ones own mortality, seized at the point of giving life. This body of work is part of the Birth Rites Collection, located at Kings College London (UK), and is the first and only collection of contemporary artwork dedicated to the subject of childbirth. The collection currently comprises of photography, sculpture, painting, wallpaper, drawing, new media, documentary and experimental film. The collection includes works by Judy Chicago and Anna Costa Boda. Kochanowska's works have exhibited in various exhibitions in Australia, USA and the UK.