Marni Kotak
Marni Kotak is an American artist best known for her durational performance/exhibition The Birth of Baby X, in which she gave birth to her son Baby X as a live performance at Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, USA, on October 25, 2011.
Education
Kotak received her BA from Bard College and her MFA from Brooklyn College in 2006, where she was one of 18 graduating artists whose thesis exhibit was shut down and censored by NYC officials. The graduating artists sued and eventually settled with the city in exchange for a monetary award and a formal apology from Julius Spiegel, Brooklyn Borough Parks Commissioner.Performance art
Kotak's work, in which she presents her everyday life as performance art, includes live re-enactments of her own birth, losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth, and attending her grandfather's funeral. She is currently working on an ongoing performance re-contextualizing the everyday act of raising a child as performance art, called Raising Baby X.In 2014, Kotak announced that she was on psychiatric medication to recover from postpartum depression, and that her next work of performance art would involve gradually going off the medication in public.