Desiree Holman

Reborn

Reborn 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.