Darci Hanna
she/her
Instagram: @darci_hanna
www.darcihanna.com
Fourth Trimester: When My Body Became a Bed (2024)
Sewn, quilted, and embroidered bedsheet
After a traumatic birth, I was bedbound--my life flattened out, my personhood felt subsumed by domesticity. I mourned my past life and was reborn as a mother. My young daughter traced my body for this work, helping me recreate the site where we met during the tumultuous “fourth trimester.”
Artist Statement
My works often consider the constraints of traditional gender roles that point to deeper systems of value in the United States. In my latest body of work, I aim to tease out the numerous subtle rules that define the contours of mothers’ lives, while they navigate social pressures to live up to unrealistic maternal standards - to be beautiful, infallible, inexhaustible, and self-sacrificing. I draw on my interest in sociology and linguistics as well as my professional background as an art historian to inform my studio practice. Historical and archival research often helps shape my work. From baking and serving breast-shaped cookies (that emphasize breasts’ primary function of providing nourishment) to creating quilts inspired by paleolithic figurines and historic birthing practices, I question contemporary social beliefs about who deserves bodily autonomy, how different bodies are valued, and whose physical and emotional labor is seen, appreciated, and compensated.
Artist Bio
Darci Hanna is an interdisciplinary artist and curator based in Somerville, Massachusetts. Trained as an art historian, she worked in museums for over a decade and helped realize several dozen contemporary art exhibitions before refocusing on her own artistic practice. She is fascinated by the places where nature and culture interact, where biology and physiology become enmeshed in social and religious narratives and power structures. Recent works focus on the complicated cultural landscape surrounding gender roles, objectification, breastfeeding, and motherhood. In addition to painting, printmaking, and sculpting, she also uses techniques inspired by traditional domestic arts such as sewing, quilting, weaving, and embroidering.