Weeds

May 10, 2022

In response to recent rollbacks of reproductive rights in my home country—the United States—this diptych symbolically examines the assault on a woman’s right to self-determination. ‘W E E D S’ blends thematic and formal elements of performance with suggestive, narrative imagery to stage a new kind of performance—one enacted entirely through inanimate objects.

To erase the actor from a performance, leaving only their trace, becomes a metaphor for the erasure of the subject itself. Denying a person the right to self-determination is not only a loss of agency—it is an act of symbolic disappearance.

Using uprooted weeds entangled in women’s underwear, the images speak to the state’s subjugation of the female body, presenting forced pregnancy as a parasitic growth that takes control of its host. A wire hanger coils around the weed—a blunt emblem of this violence—while shattered porcelain dishware represents both my visceral response and the fractured state of a nation that claims to lead the free world.

Weeds

When does life begin? Does it happen fast?
Or does it happen slowly? The living or the unborn For whom should we mourn?

Fertile wombs–
Vacant vessel for a man’s seed.
Bodies commandeered by sprouting patriarchal weeds. Extended fingers of the state–
Like sprawling roots,

Tighten grip– Constricting hands around my throat, Between my legs,
Beneath my skin.

My flesh recedes like rotting gums. Surrendered numb,
I fight to breathe
on dirty sheets,
As my body is reclaimed
by sanctifying weeds.