Join us for the opening reception for Trigger Planting 2.0 and Abortion in Context, two new installations at The Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning which address the changing conditions of reproductive rights in the United States and across the world.
Opening just one month before the presidential election, Trigger Planting 2.0 is a year-long project that assembles medicinal plants, data, maps, and research drawn from local, national, and international sources, in the Milstein Lobby and outside gardens. Collectively, the exhibition surveys the shifting political, legal, social, and environmental landscapes and advocates for forms of expansive reproductive justice and ecologies of resistance. A series of evolving installations throughout the year reflect on abortion care since the Dobbs decision.
TRIGGER PLANTING was first exhibited at Frieze NY, in May of 2022, presented by how to perform an abortion and A.I.R. gallery in partnership with National Women’s Liberation. Installed just a few days after a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press, it featured a large United States map on which abortifacient and emmenagogue herbs marked the 26 States with trigger laws, near-total bans, six-week bans, and or State constitutional amendments that prohibit protections on abortion. These laws went into effect when the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June, 2022.
The October 9th opening will feature a joint reception with an exhibition of posters forefronting portraits of innovators in reproductive health access, created by students from Abortion in Context, a grant-funded Spring 2024 course designed and co-taught by professors Wendy Schor-Haim and Cecelia Lie-Spahn.
Featuring weekly guest speakers from around the country and from overseas, Abortion in Context was created because the issue of abortion is too often subject to misinformation and disconnected from its role in overall reproductive freedom. Grounded in the reproductive justice framework, which aims not only to protect the “right to choose” but also to create the economic, social, and environmental conditions in which people can parent with dignity, the course framed abortion as one critical part of a constellation of projects that, together, work toward total reproductive freedom.
The posters on display are the final projects in the course. Students were asked to imagine that they could extend the syllabus by one week. Who would they invite as a guest speaker and why? In small groups or as individuals, students researched and chose speakers and created these posters to explain why they represent a context that is important for understanding the issue of abortion as part of a broader struggle for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice.
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This event is open to the public. RSVP is required to gain access for non BC/CU ID holders. Please write to milstein_exhibtions@barnard.edu by October 5th, 2024.