Brooklyn performance artist Marni Kotak plans to have her baby in an art gallery, before an audience, during a performance she hopes will convince people “that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art.”

Entitled “The Birth of Baby X” Marni’s performance will be the craziest thing that happened in the art world since Marion Laval Jeantet injected herself with horse blood. She is due sometime in the next five weeks, and visitors entering the Bushwick’s Microscope Gallery are warned the baby could arrive at any time. The artist has chosen the place as a “birthing room” and will spend every day there until she has her baby. “I have decided to do this because I want to show people that, as in my previous performances, real life is the best performance art,” she said.

Enjoying the support of her husband, midwife and doula, Marni Kotak says she is mentally prepared to go through childbirth in front of an audience, and says she is no more nervous about the whole thing than if she were having the baby at home or in a hospital. So not to get bored until the baby decided to come out, visitors at the art gallery can watch other works of Kotak’s related to her pregnancy, including a video where she films the audience at a summer festival and projects their faces on her belly. Marni Kotak has been known to shock audiences with her performances, which include staged re-enactments of her own birth, losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth and attending her father’s funeral.

After she performs “The Birth of Baby X” Marni Kotak will apparently continue to present her life experiences as works of art in a work entitled “Raising Baby X” in which she will probably include changing diapers, sleepless nights and crying fits.

via NY Post