. The females can lay up to a thousand eggs in their lifetime. Sorgini observed this female laying her eggs, “flicking” them on the leaf litter below where they were collected by ants, and safely stored underground.
One of the photographs by the artist, which is currently being exhibited at Homecoming Gallery, shows a hand holding a mother stick insect with its head tilted towards the light as if saying, “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Bill Shapiro is the curator of the online exhibition. He was previously the editor-in chief of LIFE magazine. The exhibition will be accompanied by a physical exhibit at the flagship store MENDO Books in Amsterdam. The exhibition includes selections from Sorgini’s entire oeuvre. It spans years, but is tied together by her painterly sensibility, as well as her dedication to documenting intimacy, family and early motherhood. Shapiro says, “Her pictures are like memories themselves.”
Ari was Sorgini’s first son. He was born six years ago. She lost her mother a few month later. In this period of joy and sorrow, she began to make pictures of her family and home: baths and swimming, watermelon bites, runny nostrils. Since then, she hasn’t stopped.
Sorgini was frustrated by the lack authentic representations of parenting’s complexities. She also photographed other women and their children. She created portraits of mothers in isolation during the pandemic. Her sitters were protected and locked in by layers of glass. Some of her work is on display at homecoming. It was published in the book behind glass .