Cried Milk (2018 - present)
Cried Milk uses data collected from a smartphone app to visualize what it looks like to exclusively breast pump for twelve months. Each visualization represents one month of data. The blue rings represent one hour, the change in value tracks the hours of sunlight and darkness, while the change in saturation indicates broad weather patterns (sunny versus cloudy). The straight lines each represent one day and the yellow circular bursts represent each 30-minute pumping session. The size of each circle correlates to the quantity of milk collected. This project connect to broader cultural conversations about motherhood. As infertility rates continue to skyrocket, many women experience motherhood through a similar, clinical lens. My hope is that this project gives voice to the millions of women who have struggled to become mothers and honor the under-valued labor of motherhood.
The Shape of Your Sounds (2017 - present)
Using audio surveillance technologies provided by a commercial baby monitor, I capture my baby’s cries and translate that data into visual shapes. The sound waves loop back on themselves in a 360-degree rotation. The result is vaguely reminiscent of the shape of a flower; each burst of sound looks like a petal. The initial purpose for this project was to try to find visual patterns that could be more easily interpreted. However, I quickly realized this was a fool’s game; the visual patterns are as indiscernible as his sounds. Therefore, what remains is a visual record of a moment in time; a beautiful reminder of those sleepless nights when the world was comprised of just my son and myself.
Sleep Regression (2016 – 2017)
“Sleep Regression” is a series of intimate works that were painted in the space of nap times and record the moments I watched my son while working in my home studio. The paintings’ small size and blue palette reproduce the video format and color, mimicking the tension between the close, private space of sleep and the distance created by the act of surveillance. The effects are eerie and disturbing images of rest. Lingering in the unconscious state of sleep the baby’s body looks lifeless. Are these representations of a sleeping child or a fetus? These works are thus unusual documents of baby’s first year of life–odd surrogates for the family photo album.
The gray-scale paintings, on the other hand, reinforce the reference to the sonogram, creating layers of distance. The painting series thus portrays an interesting paradox: the increasing stylistic abstraction chronicles my catharsis after years of fertility struggles as I move further away from my past sorrows, yet the works also reflect a turn inward and becomes more specific to my body (womb) and more private. The delineated forms in black, white, and grey look like the thermal imaging of a birth–drapery resembles the uterine wall, a dark ground morphs into a vaginal opening.
Broodwork is the ongoing art and design project founded by Iris Anna Regn and Rebecca Niederlander to investigate the interweaving of creative practice and family life. BROODWORK’s multi-faceted approach of talking, blogging, designing, event-making, and curating exists to examine and illuminate, and also to foster an advantageous environment that will in itself stimulate innovation.
Mission: the cross-disciplinary art and design project that names the previously unspoken community of practitioners whose work realized an unexpected perspectival shift after becoming parents. All creative practitioners find themselves at crossroads throughout their life; however, being affected by the specific juncture of practice and family is not generally acknowledged for its true impact. Who would have thought that writing for his son about a bear named Winnie-the-Pooh would catapult the political satirist A. A. Milne from Punch magazine into the stratosphere of literary history. His era’s exception, however, is our rule; the convergence of family and practice is recognized by BROODWORK as a pivotal influence to produce profound and unexpected work. Through its multi-faceted approach—including talking, curating, designing, and blogging--BROODWORK exists to investigate and illuminate, and to foster an advantageous environment that will in itself stimulate innovation. Curatorial installations are a predominant expression of BROODWORK in which Regn and Niederlander work hand-in-hand with creative practitioners to facilitate an entirely new conception of specific works within their practice. All BROODWORK events incorporate participatory elements that foreground the intergenerational and community-building aspects of the project. BROODWORK also collaborates with other organizations to further the discussion of creative practice and family life. Regn and Niederlander act as Family and Practice Advisor for the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, write about interweaving family and practice for the Herman Miller Lifework blog, and design the SUNBLOCK series of family-oriented events for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.