unspoken curated by Sarah E Webb

On June 24, 2022, in a sweeping and historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, one upheld for nearly a half-century, ceased to exist. 

It is a ruling that swiftly and decisively affected the lives of every person in this country but weighs most heavily upon any individual capable of carrying a child to term. 

The decision to terminate a pregnancy is not an uncommon experience: nearly one in four women in the United States will undergo an abortion by age 45 for reasons that are deeply personal, yet the stigma around abortion has generationally silenced women for fear of repercussion.

Abortion stories are unspoken stories.

The narrative thread of motherhood will be one forever woven through our collective human consciousness, connecting our unique stories, both fragile and fierce. They are tau(gh)t stories that begin within a reproductive body, and the cost, the courage, and the choice to give birth should remain a choice all the mother’s own.

Rebecca Traister writes how decades of silence had left us unprepared for a post-Roe world, as well as the ensuing battle forward: 

The fewer stories that get told, the more representational weight each one carries. Each individual narrative is asked to stand in for so much, rather than exist simply as one grain of sand on a beach’s worth of reproductive experience. In the lived world, abortion isn’t some heavily weighted reality siloed off from the rest of life, health care, and humanity. 

Abortion is life, health care, and humanity.

unspoken was conceived as a space for women to share their abortion stories. We asked them to consider how they remembered and interpreted a specific moment in their lives. To reflect upon their experience of a moment of need because we are in a moment of urgency again.

The unspoken stories we received were personal, powerful, and poignant. They became the pages of a digital commonplace book that interweaves the stories of women who chose to terminate a pregnancy with Cynthia Mulcahy’s series Abortion Bouquet: An Action. 

Mulcahy makes “abortion bouquets” from traditional abortifacient plants for artists, activists, abortion rights advocates, and allies: contemporary women holding bouquets imbued with the ancient wisdom of midwives. 

Together unspoken explores the multiplicity of ways stories speak through silence and speech. The project offers visual and verbal tropes of women, of how they have (always) been the silent keepers of their reproductive health and safety, and in a post-Roe world, will be called to interpret and navigate again.

unspoken is an act of defiance. The storytellers share their fierceness, and we appreciate their courage. Together these stories create a bouquet, and what were once secrets ceded have become potent seeds to be scattered and sown.

At this critical historical juncture, abortion stories can no longer be held in secret or shame. They must be shared in support and service to generations of future women, to actively be unspoken no more.

Sarah E Webb
Curator

Cynthia Mulcahy is a Dallas-based conceptual artist and independent curator. Her intermedia works range from large-scale public interventions to small quiet gestures and often defy categorization. Be it a community square dance, farming as street theater, an exhibition examining war or an evening of musical performances to recognize a public city park’s forgotten history, Mulcahy’s research-driven practice often begins in the archive with a desire to re-investigate the historical record for the present moment. Questioning the divisions between various forms of art-related practice, the artist’s work also promotes the concept and practice of art as activism. Mulcahy’s commitment to platforming the work of others through organizing exhibitions has focused on pressing contemporary subjects such as modern warfare and American militarism.

Parsley—a very common medicinal and culinary herb as well as an abortifacient plant—producing seeds in Cynthia Mulcahy’s May garden.

Photo credit: Cynthia Mulcahy

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Sarah E. Webb (she/her)

Sarah E. Webb’s path consists of many stitches, but at heart, she is a storyteller. From the artist studio to the yoga studio, her multi-disciplinary approach considers both spaces as creative sites of corporeal process and practice. Webb is the co-editor of Singular Women: Writing the Artist, UC Press (2003) and was a member of the 2021 Listen To Your Mother cast, Rochester, NY. She received her MFA from Visual Studies Workshop, and is currently completing her CPA in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University. Webb  teaches  at the University of Rochester and  facilitates writing and meditation retreats on Monhegan Island, ME. 

HOLDING AND BEING HELD: A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE LEIGHTON MASSONI

In conjunction with the online exhibition unspoken, don’t miss this conversation between curator, Sarah E. Webb and Anne Leighton Massoni.  Read more HERE.

Anne Leighton Massoni, is the former Managing Director of Education at the International Center of Photography. Massoni graduated with a MFA in Photography from Ohio University and BAs in Photography and Anthropology from Connecticut College. Her work relates to ideas of both real and fabricated memories and identity. She has exhibited internationally including The Print Center in Philadelphia, NIH in Washington, DC, Newspace in Portland, and the East-End Film Festival in London. Publications include ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art and The Photograph & The Album. She co-edited The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography.