hand her the knife blade first

The series, hand her the knife blade first, explores how women's pain is overlooked and aestheticized, and how patriarchal systems coupled with gendered stereotypes perpetuate the control of women.

The series, hand her the knife blade first, explores how women's pain is overlooked and aestheticized, and how patriarchal systems coupled with gendered stereotypes perpetuate the control of women. Exploring bodies and images is my way of interrogating how the historical oppression of women is cyclical. I'm particularly interested in women's bodies as a site of conflict, control, and resilience. I utilize techniques that feel repetitive or obsessive because they mirror the invisible labor oppressed people exert in their ongoing efforts to resist systems designed to silence them. My process involves cutting, layering, staging, and weaving found photographs, referencing traditional women's labor while recontextualizing the images through a contemporary feminist lens. I use found images from medical textbooks and online archives, assembling them into new compositions that question how cultural norms have been used to control and erase women's autonomy. My work challenges dominant narratives surrounding the body, authorship, and gender. My work relates to the exhibition theme because in it the female body itself becomes an edge, a site where control and patriarchy converge, and where resistance persists as an ongoing, unfinished labor.