Birthing scene
- Title:
- Birthing scene
- Collection:
- Billie Jean Isbell Andean Collection
- Set:
- Gender roles series
Tablas - Date:
- 1990
- Location:
- Sarhua (Peru)
- ID Number:
- ISB_01376
- File Name:
- ISB_01376.jpg
- Culture:
- Quechua
- Subject:
- Birth
Tablas
Paintings
Folk art - Image View Description:
- View of Birthing scene
- Description:
- As a woman gives birth she sits on her husband's lap and pulls on a rope. The midwife kneels in front of her, a shaman (divinator) sits at a ritual table and divinates the child's future. A woman sits with a pot of chicha (corn beer) to give to visitors. The husband buries the umbilical cord after birth. The birthing scene depicted in the Sarhua painting is notable due to the direct participation of the husband in the birth. He is shown holding his wife on his lap during birth. From a spectator's point of view, especially children who wander in and out of the birthing location, visually it appears as if both parents are giving birth. This, I believe, reinforces later gender paradigms that emphasize flexible gender identity in early years of life.
- Bibliography:
- Isbell, Billie Jean. "De inmaduro a duro: lo simbólico femenino y los esquemas andinos de género." Chap. 8 of Más allá del silencio: las fronteras de género en los Andes, D. Y. Arnold, compiladora. La Paz: Biblioteca Andina, 1997: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/2474
Billie Jean Isbell Andean Collection, Images from the Andes: Collection Highlights: Gender: http://resolver.library.cornell.edu/collection/Isbell/gender - Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Series:
- Gender roles series : 01
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- This digital collection and its contents are owned and operated by the Cornell University Library. Digital reproductions are provided for private study, scholarship, and research use only and may not be downloaded for use in electronic or print publications (including websites), exhibitions or broadcasts, without permission.