This may be one of the most amazing debuts the art world has ever seen.
A pregnant Brooklyn performance artist is planing to have her baby in an art gallery in front of an audience as part of a piece examining childbirth.
Called “The Birth of Baby X,” the performance will feature artist Marni Kotak turning Bushwick’s Microscope Gallery into her “birthing room” where she will spend each day until the baby comes.
“I hope that people will see 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,” she said.
Kotak is due sometime in the next five weeks. Visitors to the Charles Place gallery — where “The Birth of Baby X” starts today — are warned that the baby may be born at any moment.
“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.
Kotak said that she is mentally prepared to give birth with the art world looking on.
“I wouldn’t say that I am scared to do this, because I have a good support team: my midwife, doula and wonderful husband,” she said. “Of course, I am a bit nervous about the whole process of giving birth and having a child, and like every mother, I am hoping that everything goes smoothly.
“But I am no more worried than I would be if I were having the baby at home or in a hospital.”
This isn’t the first shocking performance from Kotak, whose résumé includes “staged re-enactments of her own birth, attending her grandfather’s funeral and losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth,” according to the gallery.
Until the actual delivery occurs, visitors can watch other works by Kotak related to her pregnancy, including videos in which she films the audience at a summer festival and projects their faces onto her belly.
“With ‘The Birth of Baby X,’ ” the gallery said on its Web site, “Kotak continues to present her life experiences as works of art, works in which she strives to avoid the spectacle often involved in performance art to reach what is real.”
The baby will be the first for Kotak.
When the bundle of joy comes, she will be as surprised as anyone.
“We still aren’t sure of the baby’s gender, and my due date is a bit uncertain,” she said.
What’s next for Kotak? A work called “Raising Baby X,” of course, in which she will presumably turn crying fits, poopy diapers and sleepless nights into art.
“She [will] re-contextualize the everyday act of raising a child into a work of performance art,” the gallery said.