Andi Arnovitz, The Commerce of Infertility, 2013; polyester polymer resin, plastic ready-made babies, hand-stamped metal tags. Installation size variable: each baby measures 3.5 x 3.5 x 3.5 cm. There are 400 babies. © 2013 by Andi Arnovitz. Permission to reprint may be obtained only from the artist.
Artist Statement:
The piece was inspired by several events. Two movies, in Canada the movie Starbuck and in the United States the movie Delivery Man, both based on actual stories where sperm banks carelessly used the same sperm over and over, creating a situation where the same man fathered hundreds of children. A Montreal man fathered 250 children. A man in the UK fathered 500. I also read about two young women—freshman at Tulane University—who became friends based on similar interests and then discovered they shared the exact same Colombian sperm donor father.
This piece does not at all condemn the progress made in the fertility field. But it does call into question the enormity of the task we have of keeping records, of creating limits and keeping greed and finances in check, as this is a very lucrative business. I harbor a suspicion that with all the progress and advancements medially there comes a host of emotional, personal, and ethical implications we have not even anticipated.
Artist Biography:
Andi Arnovitz is a conceptual artist living and working in Jerusalem, Israel. Through installations, prints, artist’s books, and sculpture, she creates art that addresses issues of infertility; divorce; domestic violence; thorny places where gender, politics, and religion meet head-on; and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her work has been exhibited all over the world and is in many public and private collections, including the US Library of Congress, the Israel National Library, the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, YU Museum of Art NYC, the Magnes Collection, and Yale University. For more information see: www.andiarnovitz.com.