In Utero II
Stratachrome sculpture · 2019
- ArtistDavid Spriggs
- Date2019
- Dimensions61 × 46 × 91 cm
24 × 18 × 36 in - MaterialsAcrylic on layered transparent sheets in a display case
- CollectionPrivate collection
A prenatal figure floats within a luminous enclosure, present as a body yet known through the visual language that makes life visible before birth.
In Utero II returns to a subject Spriggs first developed in 2001. The curled figure appears weightless and self contained, yet its dependence is absolute. Its suspended state holds vulnerability, protection, and emergence within the same image.
The work recalls the visual language of prenatal imaging, through which an unseen body becomes externally visible. That act of seeing is never neutral. It turns an intimate condition into an image and gives form to a life that remains inaccessible to direct experience.
Origin and enclosure
In Utero II returns to a subject Spriggs first developed in 2001. The curled figure appears weightless and self contained, yet its dependence is absolute. The work holds vulnerability, protection, and emergence within the same image. Its softened contours recall ultrasound and other forms of prenatal imaging, technologies that translate an interior and private condition into something available to sight.
This visibility is both intimate and estranging: the figure becomes recognisable before it can be encountered directly. The transparent case reads at once as womb, screen, and boundary. It protects the image while exposing it to observation. As the viewer moves, the body gathers and disperses across the planes, suggesting that origin can be pictured but never recovered as a complete experience. In Utero II continues a body of work begun with Spriggs’ first In Utero sculpture in 2001.
In Utero II continues a body of work begun with Spriggs’ first In Utero sculpture in 2001.