I was born under a cauliflower

In I Was Born Under a Cauliflower, I explore pregnancy as an encounter with the unknown, imagining parallel realities where intimacy and estrangement intertwine, and labour becomes a free, tribal dance.

One of the most common stories told to children who asked how they were born was that they had grown inside a cauliflower. A symbol of fertility and life, the cauliflower was traditionally harvested nine months after sowing, its growing cycle mirroring the gestation period. Planting and harvesting cabbages were entrusted to women known as midwives, just like the women who assisted expectant mothers during childbirth. In peasant tradition, they were the ones responsible for severing the “umbilical cord” that bound the cauliflower to the earth.

In I Was Born Under a Cauliflower, I explore, through images, a world I do not know — one that feels so close to our own, yet remains imperceptibly distant.

I imagine parallel realities for a being that is still unknown to us. I try to move beyond the stereotype of pregnancy as a moment of fusion between a woman and the being growing inside her, instead embracing the sense of estrangement this experience can evoke. I approach this condition as a game between myself and the women I portray, in which even the pain of labour can take on the frenetic rhythm of a free, tribal dance.