Materialising Loss

Key Words: Women’s Health Inequalities, Pregnancy loss, Grief, Creative Arts and Health, Collaboration, Medical Data, Care Aesthetics.

Miscarriage is a common occurrence, affecting one in ten women in their lifetime.

Historically, pregnancy and baby loss has largely remained hidden, particularly within certain marginalised communities where women’s experiences of health inequality has been hidden and silenced. Led by PDRA artist Dr Sofie Layton this creative research by practice project will engage with 3 different groups of women in different cultural contexts who have experience miscarriage, stillbirth and pregnancy and child loss. 

These women’s groups include – 

1. A workshop series in collaboration with the Discovery Research Platform Practice Fellow Dr Estelle Verdi to develop creative work with Muslim women. Focusing on care and repair, the workshops will explore the taboos and complexities faced by this group of women using non-image-based techniques including a ‘Kintsugi’ repair methodology. 

2. A R&D workshop series co-facilitated with artist and breath worker Nicola Griffiths developing a decolonial collaborative practice for thinking through maternal loss. These workshops will explore creative breathwork and artmaking, along with participants’ reflections on the support they received as part of their maternity care. 

3. A third project supported by cardiologists and midwives at the Freeman Hospital Newcastle. Here we will explore pregnancy loss by translating medical images into cyanotype prints and opening up the complexities of and different forms loss experienced by women, which may include termination, due to their health reasons.  

This research sits within the Visual and Material Lab as part of my Post Doctorial Research Associate (PDRS) position by exploring a decolonial co-created workshop methodology. This involves using care(ful) creative techniques which have been collectively devised to open up women’s lived experience through artistic methods which include working with remediated medical data to develop a collaborative care practice.

These three workshop projects will feed into the development of The Care(ful) Studio, a research space which visually and haptically considers different approaches to ‘Materialising Loss’ which will aim to reflects these multiple community narratives. 

Through the artistic research by practice the content of the installation/performative space within which patients, publics and practitioners lived experiences are remediated and shared. The installation may also be used as a workshop space that facilitates a new haptic engagement with the remediated medical data outputs and women’s narratives.  

Other organisations such as ‘Healing Justices’ London and the Black Health Humanities Network at Durham Institute of Medical Humanities will advise on inclusivity.