Mother, 2022,mesh fabric,67 x 24 in,photo by Giovanna Lazzarini
My topic is about a long-standing phenomenon in China: the preference for sons over daughters. This means that only male fetuses are valued, and female fetuses are abandoned or killed. Because the baby girl was seen as useless someone who would eventually marry into another family. The baby girl who survives will grow up ignored and took on the responsibility of raising her brother. Baby girls considered unwanted by their parents, are often drowned in the water , that’s why I chose this location. Under the phenomenon of son preference, women are required by their husband's family to give birth to a boy, and if it is a girl, to keep giving birth until they give birth to a boy. Women are treated as reproductive machines without dignity or rights of their own. I used to see my grandmother's belly skin sagging and covered in stretch marks from overbirth, and it was a big shock to me, I use this in my research and in my work. In an experiment, I found that stretchy fabric heated with a heat gun produces stretchmarks and I used this method to make these clothes. The belly, breast and hip, which represent the characteristics of fertility, wrap the human body and represent that women have been completely bound by fertility. I made many breasts to irony people who treat women as animals. For example, pigs ,pig have many breasts and can feed many piglets at a time, thus achieving more efficient fertility in people's minds. The baby boy is larger than the baby girl, he gets more nutrition and resources, he is well protected, and before he is born his sisters have drowned because they are not expected children.
