Marina Berio

I am the gatekeeper

My body has carried me all the days of my life. I will protect it and show it

gratitude. I will not subject it to undue stress or allow others to do so.

When I gave birth to my son, a beautiful drug-free labor of five hours was

complicated when part of my placenta was left behind, requiring a D & C so

that I would not come down with puerperal fever. A small artery burst, and I

hemorrhaged so badly that I nearly got a transfusion. I couldn’t stand for

days, I lost part of my labia, and vaginal sex was painful for a full year.

My internal and external topographies – emotional, psychological, social,

as well as anatomical – were changed forever by giving birth. And I firmly

believe that if I had given birth before the middle of the 19th century, or in a

place without adequate healthcare, I could have died.

If my body is to become the portal to another person’s whole existence and

total dependence upon it, I must be able to say that yes, I am willing to take

these risks. Or no I cannot, will not.

There exists a code of silence around the harsh impact of childbirth on a

body, and I can only hope that if this silence abates, people will understand

how utterly invasive of a person’s autonomy it is to outlaw abortion.

So I and only I choose whether I allow

my flesh to be split and my blood to be spilt

my bones pushed apart

my skin and my ligaments stretched

and my vagina acutely pained.

I can rupture and I can tear

I can hemorrhage

I can become infected

I can become infertile

I can die.

I and only I

am the gatekeeper of this space inside my body.

Bio

Marina Berio is a visual artist from New York City who works with drawings and photography to convey aspects of visual experience that are intimate and visceral. She has made family pictures printed with her own blood, and rendered photographic negatives of spaces, objects and landscapes as large-scale charcoal drawings imbued with subtle materiality and depth. A more recent project, shot on the walls of her studio, expresses the interrelationship between the nested realities of mental space, creative process, the internal topography of the body, and the studio itself.

Berio studied photography, drawing, sculpture and art history in college, and then earned her MFA in Photography at Bard. She has been awarded grants by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and various residencies including the MacDowell Colony. Her most recent shows have been at Galerie Miranda in Paris and Bienvenu Steinberg and J in New York.

Berio teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City.