In RE:Birth, Valeria Cherchi addresses the issue of obstetric and gynecological violence and the trauma that arises from it, in its individual, social, and political dimensions.
The project is rooted in a personal story: the death of the artist’s namesake sister at just six months old due to an unreported episode of obstetric violence. This event becomes the starting point for an investigation into the phenomenon. Through her research, Cherchi creates non-linear narratives that invite critical reflection on the events she recounts, bringing to light power dynamics tied to systematic forms of negligence and oppression. Her work proposes spaces of resilience, drawing strength from solidarity and peer support.
The work-in-progress is composed of 44 materials from family archives: 22 photographs and 22 documents. Newly created images illustrate maternal experience and the relevant places, both in a documentary and speculative form.
Among the themes explored are transgenerational trauma and the impact of perinatal loss on fathers, who were interviewed in collaboration with a psychoanalyst. These reactions are represented through underwater visions that evoke the isolation that often accompanies such experiences.
In Aluminium (WATCH THE VIDEO), the artist invites her father to perform inside his workshop, a place where she herself spent her childhood by his side. The work symbolically and viscerally stages the violence of the delivery room.
It transposes this experience into an industrial, raw, everyday environment: the workshop as an emblem of the working class, aiming to highlight the intersectionality of obstetric violence a form of abuse that manifests differently depending on social class, gender, and the body.
In collaboration with the Hungarian organization Emma -a national women’s association advocating for fundamental rights and social equality for women in the realm of sexual and reproductive health and rights- the artist has documented, through photographs and video (WATCH THE INTERVIEWS), the role of doulas within the Roma community of Alsózsolca. These figures not only offer essential support to mothers before, during, and after childbirth but also act as crucial witnesses against violence and racial discrimination within the healthcare system, shedding light on dynamics that are often silenced.