2025, Collage, 49 x 49 inches
UV printing on plexiglass, thirty years old human embryo image, hand dyed fabric, sails, gauze pads, syringe wrappers, sewing pins, thread, aluminum frame.
Embryo Collage is a new series of textile and photo collages that builds on my long-term adaptation of ancient healing rituals. The hand-dyed fabric collages are layered behind giant, pixelated prints of embryos on transparent plexiglass. This series was developed in collaboration with Yong Hyun Song, an embryologist, utilizing previously unreleased 30-year-old human embryo images captured at Harvard University in collaboration with the Ichilov IVF center.
This work addresses gender-based oppression, focusing on pregnancy, birth, abortion, infertility, and motherhood. In the wake of widespread violations of bodily autonomy, compounded by cuts to scientific research funding and consistently low funding for women's and reproductive health, this work collages a series of apparent opposites. It conceptually weaves together ancient and contemporary threats to female bodies through shared formal qualities and a spiritual thread.
I was heartbroken to learn that the exhibition these were created for was canceled because of censorship. It is wild to see how experiences of silencing that many female patients experience in the medical system are replicated in art.
Thank you Elisabeth Sherman for the conversations and invitation that led to the creation of this work, and Foundation of Contemporary Art for the production grant.
Photographs by Ocean Studios
Print on translucent film, thirty years old human embryo image, hand dyes fabric, thread