ARTISTS STATEMENT
My current body of work, under the title ‘Barren’, aims to unwind and explore the experience of early motherhood. I draw not only from my own life, but also from those women around me whom I love; The IVF treatments, the surrogacies, the sperm donors, the ectopic pregnancies, the unexpected twins, the many miscarriages, the abortions, the failed marriages, the rapes, the unwanted pregnancies, the emergency c-sections, the preeclampsia, the still-births, the premies, the prolapsed uteruses, the stone-cold infertility, the endless negative pregnancy tests, the broken dreams, the encroaching menopauses, the medicated, the postpartum depression, the raging hormones, the hospital and the home births – every woman’s story with reproduction is a unique as a fingerprint. The deeper you dive into these stories, the better you listen to the women telling them, the clearer it becomes that any concept of a “normal” pregnancy is pure nonsense, and the very idea dissipates like a smoke-screen put up by a patriarchal telling of the human story, designed to dismiss and discredit the song of the female experience. ‘Fara’s Choice’ deals with the story of an abortion, and a woman forced to make an impossible decision, searching through everything she is, has been, and will be.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Chris Cowan is a multidisciplinary Canadian artist, born in Brooklyn, New York, raised in Toronto, Canada, now settled in the Ottawa Valley. She holds a MFA in Oil Painting from Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan, a BFA from NSCAD University, with a research residency at Kwame Nkrumah University College of Art in Ghana. Chris was a recipient of The Monbukagakusho Scholarship – a four year research grant issued by the Government of Japan to study Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan. Chris has exhibited internationally, is a member of the German-based Women in AI & Robotics, and a member of 44.4: a mother-artists collective based in Ottawa, Canada. In 2024, she was an artist in residence at the Rockland Woods Residency in Bremerton, Washington. As a mother to a seven year-old son, Chris’ maternal experiences are central to her art practice. Her works aims to subvert historical depictions of motherhood as they present in Western art, as she explores narratives of fertility, reproduction, pregnancy, and women’s health. She produces highly detailed paintings and short animations with the help of AI image generating software. Her work serves as a contemporary iteration of the Surrealist art movement, building upon visual traditions of dream-like imagery and continuing the movement’s exploration of the unconscious. Working at the intersection of traditional Fine Arts and generative technology, Chris invites viewers to challenge narratives of “normal” human reproduction, and to reconsider the very essence of artistic creation.
© Chris Cowan