ArtNet News wants to know, “Why is Zoe Buckman Using Her Placenta to Create Art?”
The highly personal nature of Zoe Buckman’s artwork, Present Life features her plastinated placenta as well as numerous works representing the ephemeral organ through various media like concrete, neon and photography.
Cait Munro from ArtNet talked with Zoe to find out the answers to her question as well as a few others. Here’s a brief excerpt:
When British artist Zoe Buckman wanted to preserve her placenta as a piece of art, she had to look as far afield as Germany. Despite the precedent of actress January Jones popping pills made from her own placenta (and generations of women choosing to consume or preserve it in other ways), no one in the United States would touch it. But the Institute for Plastination in Germany took Buckman’s request “no questions asked.” In nine months, she received the package—her placenta as a hard, pink, sculptural object complete with an umbilical cord.
“I wanted to try and freeze that moment when something living begins to die,” Buckman told artnet News on a recent visit to the East Village home she shares with her husband, actor David Schwimmer, and their three-year-old daughter Cleo. “This was all part of having the baby and then starting to think about death, and how my child is going to die, and I am going to die,” said Buckman who found out she was close to losing her child during her pregnancy due to a partially “depleted” placenta. “That’s really fucked up.”
Get the complete story on Present Life and read the rest of the article at news.artnet.com