Cycle II “Baby Maybe Series”
By Labkhand Olfatmanesh & Performance Artist, Ashley Menestrina.
Sponsored by Maiden LA
Being a woman means having to answer for the choices you make with regards to your body and the consequential release of those trapped feelings.
Launched in 2018, Baby Maybe is an ongoing project by Labkhand Olfatmanesh comprising performance, photographs, film, and interviews with women of childbearing age, and interactive gallery experiences that really explores the emotions around this question.
Ashley and Labkhand are collaborating on a series of conceptual movement-based recordings structured around the nine-month gestation period from conception to birth.
By showcasing forms of water in progressively growing frames of movement and existence, they also show the cleansing properties of how women can wash away these loaded expectations put upon them.
Labkhand states, “Being born female means being born having to answer to others for the choices you make with regards to your body.”
Ashley said, “Inner turmoil of monthly cycles serves as enough reminder of what our bodies can do. Weight. Pain. Flow. Embarrassment. But our bodies know how to wash themselves out. We will not use what is not needed.”
The series of nine videos will be displayed daily on the Baby Maybe website from 09/09/2020 at 9 am and each day is a series of performance and documentation daily installations that dance around motherhood myth.
Photo by Nousha salimi