‘What you want to do is make people look’: Visibility, or lack of visibility, for reproductive rights

Lee, Louisa (2024) ‘What you want to do is make people look’: Visibility, or lack of visibility, for reproductive rights. In: CHOICE TACTICS: Art, Abortion, and Bodily Autonomy Today, 16/02/2024, Hilton Chicago, Chicago, United States.

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Abstract

‘What you want to do is make people look’: Visibility, or lack of visibility, for reproductive rights Images of soft, tender, nurturing caring mother-figures cradling babies post birth, or the joy of a ‘baby bump’ proudly displayed. The artist-mother, or the depiction of a mother in art and art history is a welcome and familiar trope. While the more discomforting aspects of motherhood – physically, emotionally and economically – have been explored, art about abortion is largely invisible. Deborah Solomon in The New York Times recently argued, ‘art about abortion... risks becoming lurid, overly intimate, or politically naïve’. The artist Paula Rego writes of her abortion series, ‘I didn’t want to show blood, gore or anything to sicken... what you want to do is make people look’. When depicted or discussed, abortion is usually framed around a more liberal debate of pro-choice and empowerment rather than labour, economics and access to healthcare. As writer Katherine Angel has defined, the decision to have an abortion is never taken easily, and the subsequent pain and ambivalence that can arise are seldom shared due to fears that they will be hijacked by pronatalist and anti-abortionist discourses. The reasons for abortion are multiple and deeply complex. Using artworks by Juanita McNeely, Paula Rego and Marilyn Minter, this paper explores how historically and more recently, artists have approached this largely censored topic, and asks how, following more recent debates, might artworks encompass the fight for reproductive rights alongside the economic and social realities underpinning many decisions to have an abortion.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	Presenting
Depositing User:	RED Unit Admin
Date Deposited:	06 May 2025 10:56
Last Modified:	06 May 2025 10:56
URI:	https://bnu.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/19896

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