Habitat

HABITAT is a retrospective personal account of my years of infertility (of searching, waiting, treatments, rituals, uncertainty), but at the same time looking for common ground with those who have gone through the same experience throughout history.

I knew I wanted to be a mother the day I saw a pair of tiny Levi's Strauss in a department store. The idea of a little human fitting into that wonderfully well-sewn piece of fabric, such a replica of a real one, awakened a type of tenderness in me that I hadn’t felt before. Don't worry, you're young, you have time. Little did I know at that time about the legs up, the waiting rooms, the hysterosalpingogram, the thermometer that didn’t read 37.2ºC every day, the almosts, the prescriptions, the coral of every month. Don’t get obsessed, these things happen for a reason. It's fine.

HABITAT refers to the body as a natural environment where a creature can be formed and nurtured. Infertility makes a person inhabitable. According to the WHO, infertility is the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse. Despite its importance, infertility is a topic that has historically been poorly explored. This problem is magnified because we are talking about a state that exists as an absence (the impossibility of conceiving a pregnancy), that develops in the bodies of women (a historically marginalized group) and that often further stigmatizes its subjects (it is generally lived in silence).

HABITAT is a retrospective personal account of my years of infertility (of searching, waiting, treatments, rituals, uncertainty), but at the same time looking for common ground with those who have gone through the same experience throughout history. The body of work consists of pictures of sensations, feelings, rituals and portraits of the children of friends born in the five years I tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant. With this project I want to raise awareness of a reality that is generally unknown because it’s normally lived in silence, but that affects and will continue to affect future generations — by the year 2050, 41% of men will be infertile and will need assisted reproduction techniques to conceive.