The Quickening explores the transformation and lived experience of a woman in her motherhood/matrescence and postpartum depression/anxiety. The work interrogates the under-represented transition of biological, psychological and social identity during a complex and yet ubiquitous phase of life. The task of navigating this new geography, the new days and nights, how you eat, how you sleep, how you love - this seismic transition - is called “matresence”. The Quickening details the claustrophobia, myopia, paradoxical loneliness and luminance of this transformative time.
Ying Ang's artist book, Gold Coast, won the New York Photo Festival and Encontros Da Imagem book prize for 2014, was a finalist for Australian Photobook of the Year, the CREATE Award and the Guernsey Photography Festival Prize for 2015. Her latest work, The Quickening, was a Vevey Images Grand Prix finalist, honorably mentioned in the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, finalist for the PHOTO 2020 Photobook Prize and exhibited during Rencontres d’Arles. Ying was most recently featured in "FIRECRACKERS: Female Photographers Now" and "How We See: Photobooks By Women".
