THE MIRACLES
2012
This Miracles comprises 37 performed photographic portraits of families with children conceived through various Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), from turkey baster to IVF.
In the images are single parents, same sex and transgender couples, opposite sex couples, families who are recipients of egg or sperm donation, gamete donors, families made through surrogacy and other child-rearing arrangements involving extended kinships and familial innovations made possible by ART. The families contain children born (or expected) through the use of ART; technically, miraculously, the products of virgin births.
Reproductive technologies enable miracle children to be born into expanded relational structures and new sociologies of the family. The work observes some of the demographic shifts engendered by wide access to asexual conception, and renders visible the historic phenomenon of self-belief in communities and bodies that pious voices still seek to render unholy. The portraits are modelled on Renaissance era Holy Family paintings of disputed provenance, attribution or authenticity. Of particular interest to the research project were paintings scholars argue over; whose status has been subject to sustained authoritative interrogation.
