Noriko Nakamura: What our bodies bring to us

Noriko Nakamura’s limestone sculptures explore the complexity of female embodied experiences. The monumental works of What our bodies bring to us specifically reflect on pregnancy and bodily transformation. Three works – Womb III, Woman, and Birth – relay a narrative of conception, gestation, and birth that is subtly complicated by organic and vine-line patterns and by the smaller limestone and bronze works that are positioned nearby. Nakamura imagines this collection of works as the story of a woman conceiving a child in relationship with slime mould. Slime moulds are single cell organisms that have been difficult to scientifically classify as they display traits similar to plants, fungi, and sensory animals, while being none of these. They are amorphous organisms, existing in highly varied stages throughout their life cycle including amoeboid, plasmodial (parasitic reproductive), and spore bearing stages. This narrative of female and amorphous organic reproduction proposes an alternative to the insidious Western philosophical view of male domination as part of a logical natural order, instead offering an understanding of feminine subjectivity from an empowered, and pluralistic perspective.

What our bodies bring to us is presented as part of nginha: here and now, a season of commissioned works celebrating new art and ideas.

Nakamura’s practice consists primarily of stone carving, whilst also incorporating organic materials, video work, and watercolour. Her practice is underpinned by an intertest in Shinto animism, which proposes that spirits inhabit all objects, places, and elements within the natural world. Nakamura was born in Japan and now lives and works in Castlemaine, on Dja Dja Wurung Country. Her works have been exhibited in institutional, commercial, and artist-run spaces across Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Japan.