inhabit

Holli McENtEgart

Dates: 18th May - 28th May 2022

Location: 106 Courtenay Place

Property Partner: Readings Cinema

“There is one thing we all have in common, we have all been born..”

INHABIT is a space where we examine how community, cultural and whānau postpartum care has changed in Aotearoa, how we share our experiences in real-time and as oral history. We ask, what do we know about our lineage's postpartum traditions and experiences? And how we can incorporate community care to heal across generations collectively. By combining care ethics with social practice and reproductive justice models, we bring diverse voices into conversation to explore systems of change.

As an artist Holli McEntegart uses social practice, video, performance, photography and text. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Photography and a Masters of Visual Art & Design from AUT and received an MFA scholarship to study at Carnegie Mellon School of Art, Pittsburgh, USA. She has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and the USA, and after being awarded a fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine, USA, took up residence in New York where she exhibited and trained as a Full Spectrum Doula. She has recently relocated back home to Aotearoa.

Kaupapa: INHABIT is a site of community care that will provide connection and education whilst modeling postpartum joy to its visitors, participants and co-creators. Using storytelling, conversations, workshops and making, INHABIT will center creative processing, participatory learning, and community care ethics, while taking an in-depth and creative look at how folks in Āotearoa experience and navigate crossing the threshold of pregnancy and birth, into postpartum.

Operating as a pop-up postpartum support centre we will examine our community, cultural and whānau approaches to postpartum care, while providing free services open to the public on a walk-in basis. As well as opportunities to sign up for more intimate and focused workshops.

“This is a pilot project for what I see as a model of community care that could pop up around Aotearoa offering education and support to those who are unable to access it otherwise, I wish for INHABIT to grow into a center that examines patterns of care in our community, whilst caring for our communities.” - Holli McEntegart