Wo Bu Hui Zuo Ren 我不会做人 / I won't be human, 2021
After being pregnant for 9 months, Bernice was confronted by her wonderful, demanding, newborn, alongside the fact that she had no idea how to be a mother. Her body and her baby had gone through this powerful process, but the psychological and emotional weight of it felt almost too much to bear. To cope, she moulded little clay humans with her unskilled hands, trying to become NuWa, the primordial mother goddess mythologised as the creator of humanity. The title in Chinese is a friend's pun* (thanks Cui!), and Google Translate added a new layer of meaning to this meditation on motherhood.
*做人 (zuò rén) is generally used to talk about being a virtuous person, sometimes used as a euphemism for making babies, but it can also mean to make/mould a person.
Video installation
12:30 mins looped, 16:9 aspect ratio
Dimensions variable
After being pregnant for 9 months, Bernice was confronted by her wonderful, demanding, newborn, alongside the fact that she had no idea how to be a mother. Her body and her baby had gone through this powerful process, but the psychological and emotional weight of it felt almost too much to bear. To cope, she moulded little clay humans with her unskilled hands, trying to become NuWa, the primordial mother goddess mythologised as the creator of humanity. The title in Chinese is a friend's pun* (thanks Cui!), and Google Translate added a new layer of meaning to this meditation on motherhood.
*做人 (zuò rén) is generally used to talk about being a virtuous person, sometimes used as a euphemism for making babies, but it can also mean to make/mould a person.
Video installation
12:30 mins looped, 16:9 aspect ratio
Dimensions variable