"Raising Baby X" focuses on the very significant, often overlooked, act of motherhood and raising a child as a work of performance art. This is an on-going project for Brooklyn-based performance artist Marni Kotak who creates multimedia works in which she presents an everyday life being lived.
The long-term project, currently in its 7th year, began with her son’s Ajax (aka Baby X)’s birth, in her solo exhibition "The Birth of Baby X", and will encompass the overall span of his formative years from birth through roughly age 18 as Ajax moves into adulthood and develops an independent life. Various aspects of raising the child are taken into consideration such as food, education, clothing, the child’s room, healthcare, playtime, travel, safety, discipline, entertainment, and simply loving the child.
For this project, Kotak has and will continue to hold exhibitions and public performances, as well as produce a series of videos dealing with her performance of motherhood in the context of current events in her own life and the world at large. So far all of her exhibitions and performances over the past 7 years since and including The Birth of Baby X, have presented various aspects of her parenting experience, such as "Raising Baby X: Project Launch" (2011), where Kotak breastfed and cared for her son as a performance and presented her son to the public as a work of art; "Raising Baby X: Story Time" (2012), where Kotak read a children's book to her son as a performance; her solo exhibition "Raising Baby X: The First Year" (2012), dealing with the ups and downs and milestones of the first year of raising her son; "Raising Baby X: Playtime!" (2013), a public playdate with Ajax; "Raising Baby X: Family Jam Session" (2013); recovering from an attempting to withdraw from medications prescribed for postpartum depression during a solo exhibition "Mad Meds" (2014); an on-going series of annual public birthday party performances held at various venues to celebrate her son’s life; and creating a treehouse in a gallery space to spend quality time with her son playing and convalescing from a recent fire in her family’s as part of her solo exhibition "Treehouse" (2017).
Kotak is currently planning and creating works for an exhibition to mark 10 years of the on-going project for which she will also write and publish a book about her experiences with motherhood as performance art, containing photographs of journal entries painted onto wooden panels, video stills from Ajax’s point of view, and photographs taken by Kotak of her and her son’s time together. The book will also contain essays and discourse on current social issues relevant to her project and facing all mothers today.
Learn More: http://www.marnikotak.com/raisingbabyx.html