Katya Ev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)
Lactating Bodies (in progress)
2023 - onwards
development with support of the Flemish Community (Be), Jubilee (Be), TWIIID (Be)
artistic research, participatory performative practice, ethical, legal & socio-economic research, series of sculptural objects (upcoming)
Image by Katya Ev
“Milk does nothing if not connect: bodies, generations, species, and so much more. Melanie Jackson and Ester Leslie describe milk as “bridge between bodies” that “disturbs the dominant motif of a bounded body, of sovereign individuality”.1
Open invitation April 2023
In the framework of an artistic residency at KANAL Centre Pompidou around breastfeeding, we are looking for lactating participants.
Dates: 11 - 12 - 13 April (one half-day)
PIace: Brussels - K1
It is a remunerated job
In particular, we are looking for performers/actors/dancers, but also any other persons who are currently breastfeeding, and who would like to do performative tryouts around breastfeeding/pumping milk (in a setting that focuses on care and aims to respects sensitivities, privacies and needs that we will determine together).
We are also looking for racialized people and lgbtq+ people who would like to share their testimonies and/or perform as well.
This is an artistic project with a political and feminist scope. It highlights breastfeeding and milk pumping being generally invisibilized (if not impossible) gestures in the public sphere and in professional contexts, and frames them as a form of body labor.
The invitation to lactating persons comes from an intention to elaborate the artistic project together with the first concerned so that they determine for themselves the conditions, scenarios and modalities according to which they will appear.2
To participate, pls contact me by mail vassilieva.katia@gmail.com
An interview prior to the residency is necessary.
Artistic team of the residency: Katya Ev (artist & initiator), Ciel Grommen & Maximiliaan Royakkers (artists & scenographers), curator Azad Asifovich (dramaturge), doctor of philosophy Mélanie Weill (host-performer and co-writer), video artist Sarah Michel (documentation), Tobias Van Royen (legal questions & sensitivites)
Beyond the residency
The artistic team of the project is in search for testimonials and participants of collective reflection around socio-economic, ethical and legal aspects of breastfeeding, but also sharing experience that links different discussions and research trajectories.
1 Iselin Gambert, Making Milk Book Review, Hypatia Reviews Online (2019)
2 in opposition to religious visual representations of a to female body giving breast emanating from cisgender male gaze