HD, video installation
3 min 53 s
a mobile with a video Badland
a bowl of chinese soup
a spoon
a white table
A bluetooth speaker

The work was comissioned by the ART Transparent Foundation 2020.

Badland, installation views and film stills, 2020

The video installation is a record of a telephone conversation between mother – daughter. The daughter is a teenage mother whose child was taken against her will from the hospital in second week after birth and taken into care of by a foster family. THE GIRL HAD NO RIGHT TO BREAST FEED OR VISIT THE BABY FOR THE FOLLOWING MONTHS. The foster family are looking after the baby until the girl reaches the age of majority. She got pregnant when she was in foster care,
and is currently in a mental hospital for smoking marijuana, losing contact with her son. By law in Poland, If a minor mother comes from a child’s facility her child is put into adoption or with a foster family. Separated from her son, the girl feels hopeless as she has no contact with the baby and has no possibility of realising herself as a mother. She tries to adapt to the life in the ward. Chinese soup is part of the ritual that accompanies her daily routine. She is excluded from the group at the ward. The “brewing” is also an opportunity to buy in the favours of senior residents of a psychiatric hospital.
The video refers to a literary work by T.S Eliot “Wasteland”.

BADLAND was later extended into a feature length documentary/gallery film, co-produced aby Birth Rites Collection in collaboration with Kings College London Midwifery Department and Arts Council England by attending relevant classes, holding workshops with students, interviewing and filming members of staff around the subject of young mothers / mental health / incarceration.

Badland was announced the winner of the BRC 2020 Competition for
New Works and is in permanent collection.

The work was among 20 finalists of Mother Art Prize 2020, London,
exhibited at Cromwell Place, London