This multi-media poetic memoir-documentary of my experience living with endometriosis manifests both the literal and symbolic symptoms of this “woman’s disease.” ENDOME infuses medical records and surgery reports with memories, songs, and dreams, disclosing boundaries and bonds between patient and physician, psyche and soma, and art and science. Endometriosis occurs when the menstrual lining of the womb becomes displaced and is found in other places in the woman’s body, causing her pain and sometimes rendering her infertile. Often this physical displacement is mirrored by the displacement of the suffering woman herself, initially manifesting as dismissal or misdiagnosis by both male and female “experts,” her complaints reduced to a hollow echo in the doctor's chamber. Investigating recent medical cases of women under the knife and physicians under the gun, ENDOME traces the fine lines between malpractice and innovation, quack and visionary, sinner and savior. Even as it closely inspects the scars left by this disease in the body and mind of an individual woman, the poem also undresses the wounds suffered at a collective level by the systematic displacement of the feminine in Western culture, and the barrenness that results. Expanding normative feminist approaches, ENDOME both relays and challenges existing histories and interpretations surrounding the disease, exposing the politically charged complications of identity, authority, and ideology. Certain dangers are exposed which threaten any subject under scrutiny (the patient, the woman, the word) when “worked on” as object in the hands and eyes of those rendering judgment (the doctor, the man, the audience).

If I have learned anything over the last two years of producing Beauty in Blood, it is that menstruation matters more than most people in society are willing to recognize; it is deeply embedded in our global body politics and is a major contributor to the vast gender inequity between men and women today. Institutionalized hierarchies maintain and support the outdated patriarchal belief that menstruation makes the female body inferior to the male body. Billions of dollars are spent annually trying to make women’s bodies conform to male “norms” by suppressing the natural menstrual cycle through hormonal birth control. The feminine “hygiene” industry perpetuates taboo thinking by suggesting the monthly cycle is dirty and socially impolite; it should be concealed in frilly pink wrappers like candy and only very loosely referenced with blue liquid in product commercials. In my experience, women and men are hungry for an authentic dialogue about menstruation and all that encompasses. It is clear the time is now to stand up and speak out on behalf of menstruation. It is a natural, messy but beautiful part of life. Just because it is not a shared experience doesn’t mean it needs to be a divisive topic that aids in gender inequity. Beauty in Blood asserts that menstruation needs to be seen to help normalize the female body and to acknowledge this part of the female experience by inviting the viewer to take a closer look and reflect on their personal gut reactions to the subject of “menstruation.”

At the root of all my work is a fundamental belief in the power of image and an understanding of the body as the primary site of knowing the world. I see images and image making as a practice in magic as much as theory: I have found that by simply re-appropriating the female form through my work, I am able to simultaneously re-appropriate the female experience. I take back both personal cultural space through the making of alternative images of the abstract and literal female figure.

Working in painting, drawing, ephemeral sculpture, performance and video, I investigate the female body as it pertains to time, language and “other”. In my current work, I explore the contemporary implications of menstrual taboo, menstrual seclusion and menstrual rite in the context of everyday life. I consider the body directly through the methodical collection of my own hair and blood. I sew my hair into paper, drawing various stages of cellular mitosis and the replication of mother cells into daughter cells, investigating ideas of time, genesis and the m(other)ness of the body. I also make objects out of primal materials of the earth: pinesap, pine needles, dirt, beeswax, clay and bone ash, using natural pigments like yellow ochre and iron oxide. I use these materials to both cast and sculpt the female form.

I am curious about the ritual aspects of form, object and image: how they can embody and impart mysteries and practices indigenous to the human species, especially forms located in the female body. I focus on areas of the body directly correlated to gender and female practices like nipples, breasts, blood, hair and ovaries.

In southern part of China, there is a custom to eat red eggs to celebrate a baby born. I combined the red eggs with sanitary napkins to stress the relationship of menstruation and reproductive ability of women. Arranging these 2 materials into blossoming flowers is to show my positive attitude towards the naturalness of these bodily functions.

The mirror is to invite audience to come closer to be with the works and celebrate the bodily functions together. However, from my own experience, audience usually had great change of their facial expression, some even said “Disgusting!” when they came closer to my work and realize what the materials were. Why did people’s attitude towards the works change so fast?

Monthly period is still a stigma in Chinese society. It is regard as unlucky and dirty. Why? This is something I want to question through my work.

The work “My Mirror” is inspired by my anxiety of period when I was a student. I wanted to enjoy sexual pleasure but unfitted for marriage and had babies. It was a nightmare when the period came late, moreover, I needed to hide my anxiety and my sanitary napkins. “Why do I need to do so?” I asked myself. These experiences made me think of raising the issue and to generate more discussion on the issue.

My work concerns the dialectic emerging at the interface of polarized gender views, examining the misrepresentation of the feminine by the masculine. This is meant to critique society’s past expectations of women, while imposing a radical position upon the subject of self‐perception, in the light of societal norms.

The images of the erotic feminine come from the volume, How to Photograph Women (Dixon’s World Of Photography.) Introduction: “The book points out the preliminary do’s and don’ts of photographing girls and helps you to tackle nude, glamour, romantic, and fashion photography.” The majority of the images are contrived and erotic suggesting the feminine is most beautiful when considered sexually desirable. The words of R.D. Laing’s Sonnets—create a vernacular deviating from “patriarchal mindset,” necessary for illustrating the conversations suggested by Dixon’s book.

The personal photographs and menstrual blood are documentation of political protest in the name feminine reproductive rights and protection. Their purpose is to stress the underlying reality to the sexualized fantasy of the feminine—that the womb‐man is not purely an object of lust and reproductive oppression.

The synergy of these elements evolve to function as an examination of the masculine by the feminine—with evidence of a reluctance to be confined by vapid interpretation. Undeniably political, my work is meant to challenge female domination with that which is softly uncanny.

Menstruarte – Showing the Abjection

As feminist I'm concerned primarily with woman as a theme, or the showing of the ways women are discriminated against in this patriarchal society. Menstruation is a stigmatic condition (Erving Goffman). Women are regarded as of lesser value, as the Other (Simone de Beauvoir). I'm concerned with showing this mechanism and at the same time with undermining it.

By using menstrual blood in my informel and monochrome work, I draw attention to the negative taboo and publicly show something that is usually kept secret – everything is done to make the time of menstruation as invisible as possible. Cleanliness and discretion are foremost. The leaking women were seen as unclean, and the unpure blood contrasted with the masculine, healing blood of Christ. So I called a serie of menstruation pictures „That's the blood I've spilled for you”, the other simply “Menstruarte”. “Hidden Abject” shows blood through a small cut in the canvas. I try first through the completed abstract structure of the menstrual blood to make the viewer aware of the theme, and second, I use the aesthetic work to reverse the negative value. Menstrual blood is abject: “Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either” (Julia Kristeva).

I always assumed that I would have children one day. It wasn’t something that I felt strongly about, but I did think I would doit. Then, a few years ago, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disease that often causes infertility. Suddenly the future I hadn’t cared much about seemed important. The maybe-never of it put me in a should-I-even-try frame of mind.

I’d been told that the urge to reproduce is primordial, so I turned to nature to look for the origins of our baby-making obsession. To begin with, all I found was the animal version of “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.” But eventually I began to understand that the scientists who described animal behavior could be as stuck in a nursery rhyme version of normalcy as me, and I began to find scientists who weren’t.

As I research, I broadened my question. I could see that this was really about all the things that we think women and men have to do in order to be natural.

For all my investigating, I still couldn’t control whether or not I can have children, but I could decide to have a children’s book, and so I did. Crime Against Nature is that book and it includes these paintings among others. It’s meant for the kid in all of us: the person who hasn’t yet felt the pressure to conform, the one who still sees the infinite possibilities of being.

female |ˈfēˌmāl|

adjective

of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes: a herd of female deer.

menstruation |ˌmenstro͞oˈāSHən, menˈstrā-|

noun

the process in a woman of discharging blood and other materials from the lining of the uterus at intervals of about one lunar month from puberty until menopause, except during pregnancy.

Menstruation is the monthly reminder of femaleness… There is absolutely no denying it’s occurrence. While it can be restrained by modern hormonal birth controls, menstruation still dictates our lives. Yet, our culture places a great deal of shame on menstrating women. The jokes and various other cultural references to periods in our media are often at the expense of women, and portray our monthly cycles as something disgusting, something to be hidden. As such, men pretend it doesn't exist, while women strive to control their bodies, lest

any sign of blood give them away as something less than clean.

The fact of the matter, however, is that women are having their periods. All the time. Everywhere. Just because it can’t be seen, doesn’t mean it is not happening, or that it shouldn’t be acknowleged. These images are meant to bring a physical process to light which is not witnessed nor celebrated, and to remind that menstruation is a daily part of our lives.

I first began creating artworks incorporating menstrual fluid in 2005, pressing my menstrual vagina to watercolor paper each morning to make a series of monoprints.  My purpose in producing and exhibiting these works was to confront the taboo associated with menstruation, demystify this natural function of the female body, and promote thought-provoking discussion among women & men, artists & non-artists alike.

After exhibiting these pieces, I curated a St. Louis based exhibition, entitled Life Blood Exhibit, which traveled throughout the city and to Cape Girardeau, MO from 2011 - 2012.  I have also continued to explore female reproductive health, with artworks themed around celebrating women’s bodies to addressing health concerns (my own and others’) to the political and social arena (abortion, birth control, the confiscation of tampons at a July 2013 Texas legislative meeting…).

I am currently working on a series of artworks in response to my personal life (the death of my father, my separation and divorce from my husband of almost 12 years, committing to a new life partner, and preparing to move from St. Louis) and political influences (especially the Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case and related discourse).

Although I first strove to detach from my work in order to promote an open forum for discussion, my recent artworks embrace the feminist idea that the personal is political, developing my own iconography to work through life hardship, celebration and change.

The Exquisite Uterus:  Art of Resistance Project

The Exquisite Uterus Art of Resistance Project is a feminist art project with over 200 contributions by creative makers who have used the act of embellishing a line drawing of a uterus on plain cloth to articulate their outrage at recent increased restrictions to women’s full access to good sexual and reproductive health care and growing limitations to our ability to determine our own reproductive choices.

Exquisite: Carefully selected; marked by flawless craftsmanship or by beautiful ingenious, or elaborate execution; deep sensitivity or intense understanding; pleasing through beauty fitness, or perfection…

Exquisite Corpse: Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystery of accident, it was a collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would place their contribution on sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.

Uterus: a major female hormone-related reproductive sex organ of most mammals including humans.  One end, the cervix, opens into the vagina, while the other is connected to the fallopian tubes and ovaries. It is within the uterus that the fetus develops during gestation. It is attached to bundles of nerves, and networks of arteries, veins, and ligaments that are essential to sexual response in directing blood flow to the pelvis and to the external genitalia.

Exquisite Uterus: An ingenious collaborative project, elaborately executed and sensitive to the perspective of women who seek to retain control over their own uteri without over-medicalization, or government or religious intervention in their reproductive health.  Beautifully executed to respond to the politics of the times.  The project promotes common and affordable access for all to medical and preventative healthcare necessary for reproductive health and well-being, and recognizes that women are the appropriate decision-makers for their reproductive and other life choices.

In reaction to, what is being called the most current ‘War on Women,’ two artists, known notorious Feminists, and sometime curators Helen Klebesadel and Alison Gates facilitated this collaborative art project.

An invitation was extended to interested artists and other motivated participants asking them to embellish a plain cloth uterus "blank" (a square of organic white cotton canvas fabric with a simple black and gray medical illustration of a female reproductive system printed permanently on its surface.)   Participants were invited to manipulate the blank uterus in any way their fertile imaginations desire, making their prodigious powers of self-expression and creativity obvious to all.

Alison and Helen asked that we not take our uterus for granted, but that we claim it! When asked for guidance from the curators the typical response was, “Its YOUR uterus.  You get to do whatever you want with it!”  Participants were urged to have fun with it but to consider how our ability to take control of our own personal uterus (and health care decisions) is a very serious and, now, political issue.

The response to the project has been overwhelming.  Makers range from professional artists to first time creatives, all determined to have their say.  They are healthcare workers, and parents, men and women, of all ages and backgrounds.   Almost 200 uteri appeared from all over the USA, Canada, Germany, and Denmark.  They came as quilt squares, pillows, aprons, and headdresses.  Each uterus is unique, and each one addresses some aspect of women’s reproductive health or well-being.  Along with the uteri have come statements and stories that range from empowering and moving to sad, and funny.  Stories of the making of the uteri have included individuals creating their submissions anonymously, because it was too hard to be identified with the project, to groups women coming together in their communities to make art, support and learn about their local reproductive health providers, and to register to vote (sometimes all in the same evening).

Alison and Helen are humbled and awed by the power of feminist humor and creativity represented in this project and its promise of agency and action.  You can see the virtual version of this project with artist statements here: http://pinterest.com/profgates/exquisite-uterus-preview-board/

Project Co-facilitators

Helen R. Klebesadel, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Alison Gates, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA