Hoodwink
2021
Performance: 00:25:00
Sculpture: Thermoplastic, 130x140 cm

Given the sheer rarity of my birth you might not know what caul is.[1] Coming into this world covered in caul meant that my newborn head and face were covered with an amniotic membrane. On several occasions, Louise Bourgeois (not the artist, my mothers midwife) told me how I looked as though I had a smothered sac over my bloated baby face when I slithered into her hands. As far as I know, the only other witness to my birth was the Falconer who always insisted I looked more as if I had had a hood over my head, a hood with a veil hanging from its rim. Those two were in disagreement on most things, but however I may have looked that night, Louise took a sheet of paper, pressed it against my newborn head and thus transferred the caul onto sheet which she later gave to the Falconer. This was early in her career, at a later stage she would have thrown the thing straight into the bin.[2]

[1] Birth with a caul occurs in fewer than 1 in 80,000 births.
[2] Never preserve the caul, as it may be used by sorcerers. Various Observations on the Sterility by Louise Bourgeois, 1609, Paris

Documentation: Fritz Hendrik and Studio Wolphi