Open Studio: Krishna Istha - M:OTHERHOOD Project

Krishna Istha’s M:otherhood Project is an ambitious trilogy of performance pieces, spanning an unknown number of years to come, mirroring the artist’s journey into motherhood from a trans perspective.

(Part 1) FIRST TRIMESTER, is a durational performance interview with the central quest to find Krishna and his partner the “perfect” sperm donor. In a durational fishbowl experience, audiences can sign up to be interviewed as a potential sperm donor, or simply bear witness to the conversations that unfold in this potent space that is both deeply personal and inevitably political.

(Part 2) SECOND TRIMESTER will be part live performance, part documentary created for stage with Krishna’s mother, to be performed when he is (finally) pregnant. It draws on Krishna’s mother Geetha’s experience of birthing a child that vanished from the hospital the day of their birth, losing another daughter but gaining a son in Krishna, and Krishna’s own personal desires and fears of wanting to carry a child as a trans person into a world that’s slowly falling apart. Fertility and reproductive rights have long been explored in feminist performance art, often in a trans-exclusionary way. As a practitioner who uses feminist tropes as a way to broach the trans experience, Krishna asks audiences to reflect on ancestry and the price of biology (in relation to queerness, gender, and race). 

Krishna is currently in development for SECOND TRIMESTER with his mother. In a special Performance Space Open Studio event, Krishna, Krishna's mother Geetha, and collaborators will be onsite at Carriageworks during Liveworks, and inviting the community to be a part of the ever-evolving development of the M:otherhood Project.