State Property

“State Property” is installed over the US Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., and over numerous state houses (GA, ID, NC, NE, TX) to protest the emergent brutality leveled at over half of the population after this disgraced court overturned Roe v Wade. Barbaric state laws have since been proposed or passed by Republican-majority legislatures across the country. We are now witnessing the beginning of these cruel externalities, including the criminalization of health care, of miscarriages, of health care providers, of safe medicine, and of pregnant citizens themselves. Forced birth is violent. Preventing access to contraception is their logical next move. State Property, an animated neon AR sculpture of a fractured uterus, refers to court-ordered, state-sanctioned intervention on surveilled bodies, making wombs public sites of legal and criminal action. Neon, often a language of cheap advertising, reflects the false promises of maternal support after, and now in some states, well before birth. State Property signals the dissolution of body sovereignty in America, of the individual’s right to decide when and how reproduction occurs, and the mortal perils of denied reproductive freedom. The work also refers to a fracturing democracy, induced by redistricting, the erasure of voting rights, and the corrupt application of the rule of law. State property was originally exhibited at @epoch.gallery in the 2022 UNPROTECTED exhibition. Special thanks to @smokinhotqueer and @shakingearthdigital