Cleaned & Contained Audio 33 minutes 50 seconds 2023-ongoing
My Body Bleeds. I Do Not Apologize. Color photograph from scan 60” x 60” 2021
In 2018 I began working with my menses. This interesting genetic material indicates organic time, is a sign of being “not pregnant,” is a symbol of loss, and a social indication of a still youthful body. It’s also often aesthetically pleasing. Making work with this material naturally invites comments and conversations and confusions about menstruation and this organic corporal process. When I began working with my blood, I also worked with the Environmental Health and Safety Department at The Ohio State University. I was taught that blood-borne pathogens need to be “cleaned and contained” to be made safe for the public. When I questioned why the blood in every woman's restroom was “safe” compared to that same blood anywhere else in the public world, they explained that in the bathroom it was “contained.” Adding bleach to blood is a way that it can be “cleaned.” This information pertains to blood from every part of the body, but the phrase stuck with me in the context of my experience as a human who inhabits a menstruating body.
Cleaned and Contained seems to me to be an apt and concise way to summarize some of the ways I have felt having been born into a body that menstruates. A body that menstruates is a body assumed capable of childbirth, and therefore, it is a body that holds a certain kind of power. I have absorbed, at varying levels throughout my lifetime, forces, institutions, and individuals who are motivated to control this kind of body. The body assumed capable of childbirth, as indicated by the menstrual cycle, is surrounded by mystery and myth. Systemic problems develop when myths are repeated as facts. Prejudice, based on myth then inform policies, and become laws and menstruating body loses the right to manage and care for their body. An excellent method of improving public health becomes distorted when the idea of “cleaning and containing” is mapped onto the menstruating body rather than remaining focused on blood, resulting in a loss of personhood. Using the power of collaborative storytelling, this project expands, shifts, and interrupts historic and current narratives surrounding the menstruating body. It works to reclaim the power inherent to the person inhabiting the menstruating body and to provide a path for recognizing humanness.
This work was supported by a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.