Artist: Clara Spilliaert
Exhibition title: My Sister is Pregnant
Venue: Kunsthal Gent, Ghent, Belgium
Date: May 31 – December 31, 2024
Photography: ©Michiel Decleene / courtesy the artist and Kunsthal Gent
With the solo exhibition ‘My Sister is Pregnant’, artist Clara Spilliaert focuses on the simultaneous pregnancy of her sister and that of a duck. She thus delves deeper into our dealings with fertility and reproduction.
In Ghent’s Citadel Park, Spilliaert noticed a duck that laid nine eggs. At the moment, her sister had just started a nine-month incubation period, a period accompanied by mental and physical changes. The artist began to observe both of them intently. She went to the park every day, until one day she saw the duck eating her own egg to gain strength. To Spilliaert, this seemed like the ultimate act of self-care and autonomy.
As with the ducks, Clara’s sister will raise her child without a father. While shaping and painting in clay, Spilliaert bridges the species and connects these two figures. Meanwhile, the artist herself lays a monthly egg that dissolves in a sea of blood.
The park duck is currently raising her only surviving chick. By the end of the exhibition, her sister’s child is expected and the milk will start flowing.
Clara Spilliaert (Tokyo, 1993) moved to Belgium in 2009 and studied first drawing and later ceramics at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. After seven years of intensive journal drawing, Spilliaert explores different media such as ceramics, murals and installations. Her works often stem from an observation of cultural phenomena and reflect an interest in history, mythology, nature and sexuality.
