Petrina Hicks: Blake Prize Finalist

Congratulations to Petrina Hicks whose work, Hercules, 2021 is a finalist in The 67th Blake Prize.

"The whole universe is said to be operating within the invisible womb of the divine mother, she is the womb of all creatures.

I made this photograph titled Hercules in reflection of the recent draconian ‘Texas Heartbeat Act’ a legislature that bans abortion after the detection of a heartbeat, this law was enacted September 1, 2021. This law seems archaic in comparison to the monumental gains made over the past several decades in securing women’s right to abortion, with nearly 50 countries liberalizing their abortion laws.

The rights of women and girls to make autonomous decisions about their own bodies and reproductive functions is at the core of their basic rights to equality, privacy and bodily integrity.

When a state, government or religion usurps a woman’s sovereignty over her own womb it obstructs a divine intelligence purposely placed in the hands of the female endowed with a womb.

To quote American poet and essayist Adrienne Rich “We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children (if and as we choose) but the visions, and the thinking necessary to sustain, console, and alter human existence - a new relationship to the universe." Petrina Hicks

Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed.”

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976.

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Petrina Hicks⁠
Hercules, 2021⁠
Archival pigment print⁠
100 x 123cm, Edition of 8 + 2 AP⁠