1st Edition
Transnational Visual Activism for Women’s Reproductive Rights My Body, My Choice
Focusing on art practices that advocate, raise consciousness and educate about the human right to reproductive health, this book analyses and compares forms of feminist artivism to interrogate bodily rights while closely examining the lived experiences of women and their right of free choice.
The transnational framing engages with resurgent imperialist and colonial ambitions across global politics and with the attempts at disrupting these positionings by prioritising feminist care as instrumental for democracy and social justice. Key foci of this book include the ways in which arts activism operates, and its strategies and methods related to, for example, the types of artistic practice employed, approaches to dissemination and reach, and engaging the public. The analysis of these topics interrogates the potential of arts activism to work while other forms of activism may stumble, leading social change in thinking, practice and, finally, legislation. Countries covered include Finland, Poland, Portugal, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Chile, Brazil, USA and Australia.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars studying art history, art theory and practice, gender studies, and women’s studies.
Introduction
1.Birthing Angel of Carriance
Bracha L. Ettinger
2. Soft Advocacy: Using textile art to enhance lactation care after infant loss
Rebecca Mayo, Lucy Irvine, Katherine Carroll and Debbie Noble-Carr
3. My First Year Too: Obstetric Violence and Maternal Subjectivity
Jana Kukaine
4.Birth Rites Collection: Imagining an Activist Art Collection
Nora Heidorn
5.The geopolitics of reclaiming the body in the precariousness of life: Contemporary women’s global art practices
Kitty Zijlmans
6. Four Heads, One 'Pussy': the Struggle for Bodily Autonomy and Reproductive Rights in the Work of the Feminist Artist Collective ZOiNA
Raquel Ermida and Bruno Marques
7.Sexual and reproductive rights in Chile:Feminist creativity, strength, and fight for justice
Lieta Valeria Vivaldi & Elise Denis-Ramirez
8. ‘I will post about it’: Aleta Valente’s production as art activism for Brazilian Reproductive Rights
Rachel Augusto and Thaynã Targa
9. Global Scream! Polish feminist protest art in Berlin
Anna Krenz
10. ‘You will never walk alone’: the feminist contemporary artivism of Marta Frej and Monika Drożyńska in support of reproductive rights in Poland.
Basia Sliwinska
11. Andrea Bowers, the Army of Three, and the Writing of Reproductive Justice
Kimberly Lamm
12. Bang Geul Han: Weaving Abortion Rights, Word by Word
Monika Fabijanska
13. Right to Be (Trans), and (Abortion by) Own Will: How activists challenged Finland’s restrictive legislation
Anna-Mari Almila
14. Thank God for Abortion: Queering and Decolonising the Struggle for Reproductive Freedom
Vanessa Parent
Biography
Basia Sliwinska is a Researcher at the Art History Institute (NOVA FCSH, Lisbon). She is on the Editorial Board of Third Text.
