Entryway, Tile, wood, and plaster, 48 in. x 48 in. x 4 in., 2020
Conceived
Fresh Squeezed 4, Morean Art Center, St. Petersburg, FL 2020
In this body of work, I am continuing an interest in lesser-known histories of knowledge gained by women, for women. The women on which these paintings are based created non-hierarchical networks for sharing reproductive information with other women, sidestepping patriarchal systems of control. In New York City, Ann Trow Lohman sold abortifacient pills and surgical abortions through newspaper ads. Her work attracted the attention of the American Medical Association and Anthony Comstock. Their intervention led to the outlawing of abortion in the US and the passing of the Comstock Laws in 1873, which outlawed mailing contraceptives, abortifacients, and anything with obscene, sexual or pornographic content. In 1971, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer created the Del Em menstrual extraction device, designed to allow women to perform safe, simple, at-home terminations of early pregnancy. Rothman and Downer sought to return reproductive sovereignty to women, mitigating the need for medical training, equipment, or even the legality of abortion. Byllye Avery grew up on a farm in DeLand, Florida and, together with her colleagues, opened the first abortion clinic in Gainesville in 1974. Avery founded the National Black Women's Health Project and was a signatory to 1989's We Remember: African American Women for Reproductive Freedom, along with Shirley Chisholm, Maxine Waters, and Faye Wattleton. Their knowledge, conveyed through coded language (Ann), demonstrations in the home (Lorraine), or collective manifestos (Byllye), is instrumental in maintaining freedom as women, regardless of the plays of those in power.
Moving away from my interest in the domestic sphere and into the public sphere, the video piece shown here is my first foray into video art. In contrast to the networks created by women sitting around kitchen tables, this piece investigates the public, outward experience of abortion in the US. Clinic overlays scrolling text from website of Army of God, a domestic terrorist organization that targets abortion providers, onto screenshots from Google Maps of every active abortion clinic in the states least friendly to reproductive rights as of November 1, 2019. The length of time each clinic is shown on screen is proportionate to the number of women it serves. The audio is pulled from Associated Press raw footage of the aftermath of attacks on abortion clinics, culminating in the arrest of Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller in 2009.