Focusing Screen
"Focusing Screen" reframes the often objectified female figure through a series of black and white photographic self-portraits pictured with the new VieVision mirror designed specifically for women to explore their own bodies and serves as surrogate for the other. This new body of work reflects my ongoing interest in the female body, reproductive health, access to care, and our interactions with medical devices. The device – and in turn, the photographs– aim to facilitate a moment to reclaim familiar knowledge of the most intimate parts of the human anatomy, anatomy that is more mysterious to oneself than it is to others, be they lovers or doctors.
In 2006, I documented my first private performance for the camera, titled "Self Exam". In my gynecologist's office, following numerous consecutive abnormal pap smears and a LEEP -- a surgical procedure to remove cancerous tissue from my cervix caused by HPV -- I used a handheld mirror to guide my hand to perform a self-pap smear and collect tissue samples from my cervix. The performance focuses attention on the physical and emotional scars cancer and the resulting surgery can leave on the body.
Over the last fifteen years, attention to my health and my body have come in and out of focus as the subject of my art. As recently as 2020, my HPV returned, and prompted me to undergo two colposcopies to gauge the severity of the infection. As a divorced, single mother of two pre-teen children, I have encountered financial challenges in accessing healthcare, relying primarily on Medicaid for care. As a stark reminder of this, in 2021, in the midst of global pandemic, the Texas legislature chose to vote, ending women’s right to choose. The photographs aim to serve as a gentle reminder of the strange ways in which we, others, and even disembodied institutions like the state and the medical establishment treat and regulate the most intimate parts of women's bodies.
