Luisa Canavarro institution
Supports single mothers in the process of pregnacy and the first years of the babies lives until the mother's life is slowly incerted in society.
VISION
- Recognition of an educational community of excellence, capable of defending life.
- Increase the mother / child bond and between them and the family, strengthening maternal and child capacities, the dream and the struggle for integration and autonomy in society.
- Development of networking and partnerships, as well as the preservation of facilities for better quality.
I meet young women who are managing the situation of being pregnant or having recently been mothers.
The interview process initiated, the physiological state - pre or postpartum - and a devastating emotional and social precariousness. My intention is to call for this reserach work interpreters who had been mothers and who could also share their experience.
In collaboration with Set designer and visual Artist Israel Pimenta, we left without rigid, conceptual, or formal structures, privileging a frank openness to the pieces of life that were exposed to us. We opted to work only with performers that went through the motherhood experience. Elisabeth Lambeck and Diletta Bindi, in an accomplice process, of those who know that only with tweezers you can touch what is so fragile.
An investigation into the emotional and social conflicts of juvenile motherhood
Set exploration. The material is fragile as the subject it self. The risk of breaking was constant but the possibilities between the lightness and visual possibilities made it extremely challenging and interesting to work with.
The journey of women in society. The Journey of being a mother and what does that represent in society. How do we have to behave? What is expected from a women, an artist, a wife, a mother and how separated are them?
Interviews to mother from Luisa Canavarro's Institution during research. The women’s names are not the original and the interviews are transcript extracts.
Maria, 19 years old, 8 months pregnant
- When I found out I was pregnant I was very scared. I knew my boyfriend would live me (…) He was only with me for sex. I had no one else (…)
Sandra, 22 years old, mother of a 3month baby
- It was so difficult. Before I was accepted in this institution, I tried to go to another one in Bragança (North of Portugal). I travelled in a bus for hours. I had no money and had nothing to eat. I was so hungry. I don’t know how my baby survived because my pregnancy was very difficult, and I had no support. I was hungry (…) sometimes I didn’t eat for a full day (…)
Carla, 21 years old, mother of 5month baby
- (…) I worked in a café with no contract. Once my boss found out I was pregnant he instantly fired me (…) I had no money to pay my rent, so I was sent out of my flat. I had no where to go and I lived on the street for 2 months before I came to this institution. (…)
The first time I heard his heart TEXT
The first time I heard his heart it was wonderful
The first time I heard his heart it was fantastic
The first time I heard his heart it was beautiful
The first time I heard his heart it was it was a incredible sensation
The first time I heard his heart it was like UAU…the best thing
The first time I heard his heart it was I just wanted to dance
The first time I heard his heart it was like feeling a music inside me
The first time I heard his heart it was I just wanted to sing loud
The first time I heard his heart it was I cried
The first time I heard his heart it was I felt lonely
The first time I heard his heart I was scared
The first time I heard his heart I vomited
The first time I heard his heart my boyfriend brook up with me
The first time I heard his heart I lost my job
The first time I heard his heart I want to commit suicide
The first time I felt his kick in my belly my feet and legs were so was so swollen,
so swollen that I felt like a pig
The first time I felt his kick in my belly my breasts were changing and I felt ugly
The first time I felt his kick in my belly I wanted to kick my boyfriend in his nuts
The first time I felt his kick in my belly my ass already triplefied
The first time I felt his kick in my belly all my friends stopped calling me
After I gave birth my hair became very weak, falling all the time and lost its shining
Look at my boobs…do you think this is sexy…
After I gave birth leaking my boobs is not allowed…no, no, no Affter I gave birth I cannot take my head back anymore…no more…I cannot stretch anymore…I have no elasticity in my belly
It’s been 8 years, after I gave birth and I cannot jump without piing in my pants
After I gave birth, I felt like I had a hole in my stomach
I started piing diagonally to the right
After I gave birth, I felt so useless, I couldn’t do anything, I was in so much pain
3 cuts, 20 stiches…
I had 15 stiches in my stomach…
20 hours of labour, 5 hands, no, 10 professionals, and they didn’t even ask permission to put their hand in my vagina…
It’s my body
Yes, it’s our body, you have to ask permission
You cannot just assume you can put your hand into my vagina…come on…it’s my body
Text developed by dancers directed by Mafalda Deville
A Monologue about the women frustation.
How perfect do we have to be?
“I am an artist. I am a woman.
I am a wife. I am a mother.
(Random order),”
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Hartford Wash piece: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance - Out-side and Inside
(1973), a durational performance that runs over eight hours, which
corresponds to the period of a normal working day, performed by the
artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Ukeles arrives with buckets of water and
cleaning products to wash the staircase at the entrance of the museum.
Later, she enters the museum, using diapers instead of rags or cleaning
cloths to, on her knees, scrub the marble floor to clean the footprints
of museum visitors as they pass. A durational performance that runs over
eight hours, corresponding to the period of a normal working day, this
Hartford Wash piece: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance - Out-side and
Inside, emphasizes the museum's invisible maintenance work.
By scrubbing and dramatizing this difficult but unknown work of
cleaning - Ukeles raises questions about feminism, work and value that
goes directly to the institution. This type of museum cleaning work
belonged to a category of what Ukeles called "maintenance" - behind the
scenes associated with maintenance - which contrasts with
"development", the category of work that is publicly recognized as
productive and worthy of praise, like the creative and individual
effort of an artist. “I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning,
cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also (up to now
separately) I “do” Art. Now, I will simply do these maintenance
everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them as
Art.”
I am so sorry for not being perfect.
I am so sorry for failing.
I am so sorry I am not happy and smiling everyday.
I am so sorry for not being there all the time for you. I am so sorry for not being the woman you expect I would be.
My interest is on how live art performances in public sphere and stage context connected to the feminist revolution help us to understand what remains to be done and the importance of carrying on the unfinished feminist revolution through live art, public space and stage performances.
Political Body
A politically subversive and performative body, working in confrontation with social issues including, women's rights, violence against women, trauma, and censorship.
For me the body constitutes an essential support as a social and political space and the technology can have the power to help transform and visualise the matter in a more realistic and confronting way in order to reach the audiences in an inclusive way by speaking to all genders, ages and social status.
Activism is a social event that uses freedom of speech as its main strength aiming to achieve change towards the cause in question. I believe activism starts within the community and for the community and as an artist/choreographer I belong in that community. Research the community as audience, the community as passers-by, the community as performers is an investigation that will make us understand that in an activist performance there is no separation between artist and audience/community, we are all together working for a cause. From a community point of view, any result is always more powerful and real when we understand the social matters that are in line and we do it together.