“Waste Not”, December 2019 – present

Photography. Menses and Glass Jars. Ongoing.

A series of small glass jars containing the artist’s menses over time, collecting her genetic material and questioning what it means to choose not to procreate as a person able to bear children, as a US citizen in the 21st century, and as a person dealing with the very real emotional and mental effects of witnessing climate change. The series questions who has value, and to whom, and for what purpose.

Some politicians in the United States and Japan have claimed that women who don’t make babies are a waste of space, as that is their only true job in this world. What does it mean when men who don’t know how the female reproductive system works are writing and enacting laws to take away someone’s agency to control their own body? What does it mean when lawmakers consider the act of creation in the abstract rather than the very real set of actions, choices, consequences, and outcomes that truly exist?

Gina wrote the following when she initially shared the work online to her friends and followers:

I started this project in December 2019 as I made plans to create the artwork, ‘Tyrant.’ As a person that bleeds monthly and has the ability to birth a child, I have been perpetually raging at the abstract way people who don’t bleed talk about what my body is capable of and legislate away my bodily autonomy.

I raged so hard, in fact, that I had a tubal ligation in 2013 to remove anyone else’s control over when I might choose to make or not make a mini-me. Because I knew what was coming.

This project came at a time when I was thinking hard about how many ‘productive years’ my uterus had left and how many people seemed to think I was wasting my gender assignation by not producing more versions of myself. It’s never been a thing I’ve wanted, even though I love children and young people, and admire and respect anyone who has their own biological family.

I am always thinking about our genetic material and what will remain of us after we are gone. Will a family member want a lock of my hair before I die? My scent on previously worn clothes? Will someone hold onto photos of me from happy times? What did I choose to hold onto when loved ones departed?

While I’d never ask for anyone’s blood, I do want the evidence of our monthly cycles to be more visible. No maxi pads or fake blue water, but the real uterine lining that is expunged with no fanfare or celebration like clockwork every 28 days to remind me that my rights are still up for debate.

So here it is… my menses. I literally made this. Collected, photographed, and recorded in a variety of storage bottles to ask us what we want, are we wasting something, and what our actual and perceived value is as walking wombs.