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Lactating Bodies: 20251031-0201
31.10.25 - 1.02.26
Cultuurcentrum Strombeek
Public opening: Friday 31.10, 6-9pm
Press preview: Friday 31.10, 11am
ph Katya Ev
Ev interrogates both the presence of lactating bodies in public space and the symbolic weight of milk as an epistemological metaphor.
Rooted in Ev’s personal experience of lactation and nourished by four years of artistic research and dialogue with other lactating persons, the project unfolds as a visual manifesto. From a queer, non-binary perspective, Ev challenges the invisibility and idealization of lactation: long represented through male-dominated iconographies of the Virgo Lactans, and reclaims it as lived, shared, and political experience.
Curated by: Azad Asifovich
Commissioned by: Charlotte Crevits
With support of:
the Flemish Government (de Vlaamse Gemeenschap)
the Flemish Community Commission (VGC)
Féderation Wallonie Bruxelles
Jubilee - platform for artistic research
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‘Who sees? From where do they see? For whom? ’
"Lactating Bodies 20251031–0201 opens as a narrative of lived experiences that artist Katya Ev Anton draws from the body and translates into form. She presents a succession of intimate situations rendered visually, in which milk - this primal substance, almost always hidden from view - becomes a surface for thought, a catalyst of unease, a mirror where childhood gleams through and adults, in spite of themselves, see their own reflection. The artist navigates the grey zone between what one hides and what one reveals, between disgust and indulgence - the moment when one looks away and the moment when the image insists - reminding us that every gaze is situated, embedded in a body, a history, a power: ‘Who sees? From where do they see? For whom?’ as Haraway might say, when the organic compels theory to go back to matter [...] ". Azad Asifovich
>> full version of the text here
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" Katya Ev’s Lactating Bodies articulates a de-romanticized and critically engaged perspective on lactation, framing it as a site of socio-political inquiry and gendered embodiment. The project disrupts idealized, sanitized, and often heteronormative representations of breastfeeding by centering the lived realities of lactating bodies, including the messiness, labor, and discomforts that are rarely made visible. By incorporating elements such as leaking milk, breast pumps, stains, and other visceral details, Ev opens space for a broader, more inclusive discourse around care, corporeality, and reproductive labor [...]" Mathilde Cohen
>> full version of the text here
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“Does milk (here, specifically breastmilk) somehow make or remake the experience of modernity or postmodernity? Who is reminded that they are a ‘human-animal’, and how does this reminding occur? And if these questions reveal some of milk’s unexpected aspects [..]1 Human milk is a highly gendered bodily "product" that can be consumed, given away or sold. The very concept of milk is, as a primary food, the paradigm of purity, gift and innocence. However, milk is particular in that, unlike other foods, it is also a form of body labor. Breastfeeding and milk pumping are generally invisibilized (if not impossible) gestures in the public sphere and in professional contexts. At the same time, lactation is advocated in European countries as a moral requirement and a strong social norm. Katya Ev Anton
1 Jeanne Firth, ‘A Month of Our Own: Amplifying Women’s Voices on LSE Review of Books’, 2018
