O parto nas artes visuais: uma abordagem histórica e feminista do nascimento e da maternidade

Abstract

This thesis tried to analyze works of art that deal with the subject of childbirth in western art in the period between 1992-2017 by a historical and feminist perspective. The main objective was to study the ways in which the theme of childbirth is being addressed in art discourse, trying to investigate the meanings produced, and reproduced, about the act of giving birth. I sought to build dialogues in the fields of History and the Visual Arts, without losing sight of the approach recently developed by feminist studies. This research has deepened in the process of meaning of the artistic works on childbirth, highlighting some specific characteristics observed in the images themselves. Taking into account the analyzes of their political and power relations, established in the exhibition spaces and in the artistic creation itself. The works were grouped according to some aspects, called here enunciative regularities from the Foucaultian bias proposed in the “Archeology of Knowledge”, and it is based on concepts of technology of gender (Lauretis), power and sexuality (Foucault). From the selected works were proposed four discursive fields for these images analysis: the use of images of science and medicine in works of art; the relationship between childbirth and sexuality; the frontal perspective of the moment of expulsion of the baby in the birth images; and the self-representation of childbirth made by artists inspired in their own experiences in giving birth.