In Wait; 2021-2023

My work explores self-determination through imagery related to pregnancy, power, and the monstrous feminine. As an abortion rights activist, scholar, and professional, I am interested in the power and necessity of women's righteous anger as a catalyst for justice and liberation, and the consequences of the cruelty and dehumanization of discouraging, dismissing, and denying women’s anger. The snake, coiled and ready, quiet and lying, its bright colors a warning sign to predators of its lethal power, represents the complex qualities of that anger. In popular mythology, the snake is often interpreted as a symbol of fear and monstrosity (ie Eve, Medusa, The Furies). That monstrosity is both subtly and overtly linked to women’s anger, implying that women’s anger is wrong, and should be avoided, conquered, annihilated—ultimately, not visible. In contrast, the snake in my work is a source of power, demanding to be looked at. It is inextricable from women’s humanity, intimately intertwined with grotesque, biomorphic shapes, evocative of reproductive organs and tissues.