Giovanni’s Womb -- 2026
Giovanni's Womb is an interdisciplinary work comprising of a series of paintings, performance, video and text. The starting point is a fictional self-portrait in which Nelck depicts himself as a pregnant trans man. Pregnancy appears here as an image that carries discomfort, care, conflict and beauty all at once. The performance is set within the cathedral of Brutus in Rotterdam and follows a fictional pregnant trans figure in a world of blue smoke and lilies. The body caresses and wanders like a moving painting, while a poem guides the viewer. Blue smoke and red lilies return throughout the installation as recurring motifs, drawing from Richard Bruce Nugent's Smoke, Lilies and Jade (1926).
The work is a direct response to James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and the tragic queer literature of the 1960s–80s. Rather than dwelling in the past, Giovanni's Womb imagines speculative futures for trans bodies, reproduction and care. Pregnancy appears as both beautiful and conflicting, and lets all emotions; positive and negative, exist peacefully together.
Giovanni's Womb invites the viewer to remain with contradiction and to reimagine trans embodiment, care and the possibilities of the body.
