Ovaries
This work was conceived in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the broader social, political, and legal consequences of that ruling. While grounded in the American context, it addresses the global structures of reproductive governance and the ongoing erosion of women’s bodily autonomy and human rights—particularly the ways Black women’s bodies are surveilled, policed, and criminalized.
Colour functions as a central conceptual device. Historically coded as feminine, this pigment operates as a visual signifier of girlhood, womanhood, and culturally constructed ideals of the female body. Its use evokes a nostalgia for progress once presumed secure—progress contingent on patriarchal, misogynistic, and racialized power structures—while exposing the fragility and conditionality of these gains.
Set against a culture that proclaims itself technologically advanced and progressive, the work exposes a stark fracture between narratives of societal advancement and the ongoing regulation and control of women’s bodies. Through law, policy, and social surveillance, hard-won rights—particularly those of Black women and other marginalized communities—are incrementally undone.
Ovaries is inspired by Michelle Goodwin’s Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhoodand engages directly with Black feminist frameworks of reproductive justice. The work interrogates the enduring legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, highlighting how women—especially Black women—have historically been confined to roles of service, reproduction, and domestic labor, while their bodies are simultaneously sexualized, criminalized, and commodified.
Through this piece, the artist foregrounds bodily sovereignty as both urgent and radical, insisting that the policing of women’s bodies must be understood as a structural and intersectional violence that shapes life, liberty, and social belonging. The work asserts reproductive autonomy not only as a fundamental human right but as a site of Black feminist resistance, self-determination, and collective liberation.