Unplanned Parenthood
Work from my most recent series, Unplanned Parenthood, will be on view at a solo exhibition at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. The opening reception is Friday, September 13th at 6pm.
Unplanned Parenthood is a collaborative mixed media installation about the history of birth control and the role racism played in the fight for reproductive justice in the United States. In 1928, Margaret Sanger published a book called Motherhood in Bondage, a selection of the 250,000 vulnerable and desperate letters the Planned Parenthood founder received in the 1920s asking for advice about birth control and contraception at a time when any information about such reproductive healthcare was deemed “obscene,” and disseminating it was punishable by law. Some wrote that they would rather die than be pregnant again. Many were living in extreme poverty, had abusive husbands, and suffered multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. This installation is centered on the stories of these mothers who longed for reproductive justice.
Select letters from the collection were hand-written by volunteers from across the country and embroidered onto fabric cut from vintage wedding dresses, symbolizing the societal expectations placed on women in the early 1900s. The embroidery was completed at sewing circles that were held around the United States and by volunteers who sewed letters at home. Each embroidered letter is suspended from porcelain backings, evoking the fragility of women’s rights, and pulls imagery from wedding cakes, lingerie, and jewelry, serving as a commentary on the societal pressure placed on women to embrace marriage, often masking the limitations it imposed, particularly during the times when birth control and autonomy were denied. Vintage meat hooks were used as symbols of the brutality of the patriarchy and the way men have treated the bodies of people with uteruses like animals. The rosary beads serve as a reminder of the enduring influence of christianity in the United States, symbolizing the ways religious institutions have played in shaping societal norms and controlling the bodies of birthing people.
For years, Sanger’s support of white supremacy was rarely discussed by white people. For a period of time, Sanger supported eugenics, she had ties with white supremacists, moved the birth control pill trial testing to Puerto Rico, and supported Buck v Bell, the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision which allowed states to sterilize people they considered “unfit” without their knowledge or consent. The truth about Sanger’s legacy reminds us that the fight for equality has been won at the expense of black and brown bodies.
