Speculative Obstetric Models: Remaking Historical Anatomical Models to Visualise Epigenetic Agency

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Nascent epigenetic enquiry understands that environmental influences can affect gene expression, often leading to heritable health adversity. Consequently, there is much focus on maternal bodies and maternal life circumstances. Increasingly there is a particular interest regarding mothers enduring low socioeconomic status as a causal explanation towards transferable epigenetic traits. Mothers have been ‘biomarked’ and made the soft target for society’s ills across time, and while epigenetic environments may somatically materialize, negative maternal self-perception also has agency with real, material consequences. Medical illustrations and anatomical models culturally frame and reproduce what we see and how we understand bodies. Using conceptual materials that are loaded with meaning, I visually rewrite historical obstetric representations to introduce epigenetic themes in my artwork. Through this my work delivers a new way of visualising and perceiving epigenetic environmental agency imprinting upon maternal-fetal bodies to incorporate aspects of maternal experience and to challenge institutional concepts regarding socioeconomic status.