Split Asunder: Obstetric Violence and Pain in Máiréad Delaney’s At What Point It Breaks (2017)

Abstract

This article examines the embodiment of pain in artist Máiréad Delaney’s performance AtWhat Point It Breaks (2017). Drawing upon the gender-based violence of symphysiotomy and its resulting pain, Delaney’s work employs an affective aesthetics and negotiates a breach in representation, thus facilitating viewer engagement with the performance as a means of critiquing the insidious control of women’s bodies and the resulting reproductive injustices in Irish society.

Keywords

• performance art
• pain
• gendered violence
• ireland
• childbirth