Visualizing Reproductive Justice: A Call to End Fake Clinics (2022)

“Visualizing Reproductive Justice: A Call to End Fake Clinics” is an exhibition I curated about crisis pregnancy centers that debuted at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont in 2022. All of the featured art was generated through a Public Feminism Lab, which consisted primarily of three things: reading texts helpful for thinking about crisis pregnancy centers, abortion, reproductive justice; meeting to discuss those texts; and translating our conversations into art and related artists’ statements.

I was responsible for conceptualizing and launching the Public Feminism Lab, which included securing funding for materials and to pay student fellows and collaborators, selecting fellows, creating a syllabus and structure, facilitating the seminar-style meetings, and, ultimately, curating, along with Rayn Bumstead and Colin Boyd, the final exhibition. 

Fellows had varying degrees of experience with both the academic field of gender studies and also creating art; some were feminist-identified art majors who had little prior involvement with gender studies while others were gender studies majors who did not consider themselves artists. Collectively, they generated more than 50 original pieces of beautiful art, which spanned a variety of mediums: sculpture, acrylic paint on canvas, photography, collage, embroidery, 3D installations, film, AI generated imagery, watercolor, and graphic design. 

To our great surprise, more than 250 people—at this small liberal arts college with a student body of approximately 2,500—showed up for the opening event of “Visualizing Reproductive Justice: A Call to End Fake Clinics.” The success of our exhibit speaks to the galvanizing nature of art and its ability to inspire fighting for a reproductively just world in creative new ways.