"I chose to elevate the Del-Em as modern symbol of disobedience against those powers that exercise control over the female reproductive system. This suction device undertake an important role socially because it can easily be assembled converting cheap objects available at home, like flexible tubes and preserves jars.
The physical reconstruction of this device suggests a reflection on the importance of women’s independence over a medicine characterised by the professionalisation and masculinisation of its practice. A medicine that excludes those feminine knowledges that were part of a tradition associated particularly to herbalists, midwives and witches.
Based on a DIY approach, the Del-Em, helps the partecipative exchange of knowledges between women and offers the opportunity to confront on a part of our biology that society still wants to suppress. This self-experimentation on the corporeity and the participation to a community is an empowering experience for women who want to claim back the control on their bodies, to counter the pervasive culture of shame around the reproductive body and its fluids.
At the end of the reconstruction, I customised this homemade device with pink and light blue ribbons, commonly used in Italy to announce new births, transforming it into a totemic object with a pop-kitsch aesthetic, not immediately refereable to the taboo of menses and abortion."
"I chose to elevate the Del-Em as modern symbol of disobedience against those powers that exercise control over the female reproductive system. This suction device undertake an important role socially because it can easily be assembled converting cheap objects available at home, like flexible tubes and preserves jars.
The physical reconstruction of this device suggests a reflection on the importance of women’s independence over a medicine characterised by the professionalisation and masculinisation of its practice. A medicine that excludes those feminine knowledges that were part of a tradition associated particularly to herbalists, midwives and witches.
Based on a DIY approach, the Del-Em, helps the partecipative exchange of knowledges between women and offers the opportunity to confront on a part of our biology that society still wants to suppress. This self-experimentation on the corporeity and the participation to a community is an empowering experience for women who want to claim back the control on their bodies, to counter the pervasive culture of shame around the reproductive body and its fluids.
At the end of the reconstruction, I customised this homemade device with pink and light blue ribbons, commonly used in Italy to announce new births, transforming it into a totemic object with a pop-kitsch aesthetic, not immediately refereable to the taboo of menses and abortion."