Selena de Carvalho
The Ultrasound

“The Ultrasound” is a visual journey of my life experience here in Tasmania. An insight into my growth, my becoming a woman and initiation into motherhood. In this age of scientific medicine and surgical ritualisation of hospitals I have made the conscious choice to self-educate and free-birth both my children. (Free-birthing means to birth without the presence of a doctor or a midwife. Basically an unassisted birth).

It is through the primal act of birthing that I have reclaimed power and place, things our modern society have sought to strip women of.

I also have a respect and sense of awe for modern medicine reflected in this work. The doctor in the image has become a mythical being, capable of extraordinary feats representing the deeply mysterious god-like nature they have come to embody. The female figure is transparent in parts, exposing the foetus in utero – the archetypal symbol of life. This refers to an ultrasound experience I had at the hospital.

It is the sense of place, identity, safety and community that have nurtured these experiences here in Tasmania.