Reborn

2010 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

11:00 minutes

Desiree Holman

location: Oakland, California
gender: female
nationality: American

Reborn, 2010 is a three-channel video by Desiree Holman that questions ideas of motherhood and the maternal instinct. The video features a group of women as they tenderly cradle lifelike baby dolls atop their rocking chairs. Although at first, the video might appear as a celebration of the maternal bond, the scene soon becomes eerie and unsettling as we see milk spilling out of the mothers’ mouths. Subsequently, the tone changes dramatically as a group of women in their underwear wearing colorful, bedazzled niqabs, perform an upbeat choreography with the dolls strapped around their bodies. The work is based on Holman’s research into the curious subculture of ‘reborners,’ a group of women known for hand-making, collecting and caring for hyper-realistic baby dolls called ‘reborns.’ Grounded in fantasy, the vernacular surrounding these dolls often addresses them as living. Fascinated by this, the dolls we see in Hollman’s video were created by the artist in a process that lasted over a year, which involved rooting each individual hair and painstakingly modeling their skin tones. Reborn is emblematic of Holman’s practice, which, through an anthropologic eye, aims at finding the fissures in established cultural tropes. As per other works by the artist , Reborn disrupts idyllic representations and conventions to bring to the fore the darker, strange and unsettling undertones of human nature.


Combining research, performance, video, digital manipulation, drawing, and installation, Desiree Holman’s multifaceted practice dissects the discourses that structure our shared experience of the social world: from ideas of gender and sexuality to notions of race and motherhood among many others. Originally trained as a sculptor, the Oakland-based artist places emphasis on objects due to their potential as repositories of meaning. With the help of performers, she then puts these objects to use as costumes or props in performances that the artist describes as “identity play-focused work.” Although Holman generally presents the performances as multi-channel videos, her oeuvre also incorporates traditional gallery works such as drawings and paintings, which a related to the videos on display. The source material informing her work is often based in her real-world research, pulling apart and interrogating social constructs she finds in popular culture and subcultures, in order to excavate social myths and illustrate the complexity of human psyche.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Contemporary Surrealistic, » Drawing, » Figurative Sculpture, » Film/Video, » Humor, » American

Drag
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope...

Hako
© » KADIST

Hiraki Sawa

2006

Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled...

Process of Blowing Flour
© » KADIST

Koki Tanaka

2010

Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour ...

Canton Novelty
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2016

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China...

Wherein one nods with political sympathy and says I understand you better than you understand yourself, I’m just here to help you help yourself
© » KADIST

Yee I-Lann

2013

Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Color of History, Sweating Rocks
© » KADIST

Ranu Mukherjee

2011

Conceived as a large-scale mural-like projection, Color of History, Sweating Rocks is a neo-futuristic, hybrid film that combines cinematic language, collage, animation, and inventive forms to highlight the plight of the peoples of the Sahara—and refugees in general—who have been displaced by oil-mining....

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

let this be us
© » KADIST

Richard T. Walker

2012

let this be us is a single-channel video by Richard T...

Open Mind
© » KADIST

Yoan Capote

2007

Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...

VFGY9
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

1979

Like many of Larry Bell’s works, VFGY9 deals primarily with the viewer’s experience of sight...

Hand Palm Echo 1
© » KADIST

Christine Sun Kim

2022

Hand Palm Echo 1 is a digital animation based on Christine Sun Kim’s staircase mural at The Drawing Center in New York (10 March – 22 May, 2022)...

7″ Single 'Pop In'
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...

Spaceship sketches of The Lemurian
© » KADIST

Yin-Ju Chen

2011

This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...

One Universe, One God, One Nation
© » KADIST

Yin-Ju Chen

One Universe, One God, One Nation was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s analysis of space exploration and by the astrological horoscope of Chinese political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)...

Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta Series
© » KADIST

Wimo Ambala Bayang

2011

Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...

Untitled (Wheelchair drawing)
© » KADIST

Edgar Arceneaux

2006

Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...

Armless
© » KADIST

Chloe Piene

2005

The figure in Armless tapers away...