On display till Jan. 1 in Milwaukee, the traveling exhibition Spatializing Reproductive Justice shows how design can help increase equity in reproductive healthcare.
Walking into the Spatializing Reproductive Justice exhibit, you’ll find projects honoring and exploring to the past, present and future of reproductive justice. Amongst the bursts of green paying homage to expanding abortion rights in Latin America, detailed maps of abortion clinics in the U.S. are pinned behind curtains. To the right, colorful projects show how architects and designers might play a role in preserving and expanding abortion access—ideas span from repurposing old train cars into spaces providing healthcare, to considering how federal land could be used in states with abortion bans in place.
On display at The Center for Architecture in New York City from May 2 to Sept. 3, 2024, the traveling exhibition is composed of student research and work by design studios curated by Lori Brown, FAIA, Lindsay Harkema, Bryony Roberts, FLUFFFF Studio, Sadie Imae and Natalya Dikhanov. The installation considers how factors like gender, race, class, sexuality and geographic location impact an individual’s ability to access abortion.
From Oct. 25, 2024 to Jan. 1, 2025 the school of architecture and urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will host Spatializing Reproductive Justice, a traveling exhibition and programming series working to spread awareness on how design fields can help increase equity in reproductive healthcare in a post-Roe landscape.
The exhibition originated from architecture studios taught in the fall of 2022 at Syracuse University, The City College of New York and the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Curator Lindsay Harkema taught a class entitled “National Care: Abortion Access, Reproductive Justice on Federal Land,” considering how abortion access can be maintained and expanded even in states with abortion bans in place.
The space is decorated with green and white mop heads—referencing not only domestic spaces and occupations, but also those who work in clinical spaces. Walking towards the back of the space, you’ll find a wall paying homage to the Black women who founded reproductive justice, uplifting reproductive rights as heavily implicated with race, gender, sexuality and class inequities in the U.S.
“It’s critical for public audiences to learn about and from the rich history and present of the BIPOC-led, reproductive justice movement that has created the foundation of the powerful activism we see today,” said Harkema.
Although the reproductive rights movement is often not directly associated with the design space, Spatializing Reproductive Justice brings together the areas where they overlap, hopefully prompting designers and architects to consider how they can have an impact and support reproductive justice in their communities. As 14 states completely ban abortion and 27 states have a ban based on gestational duration, designers can play a role in preserving and imagining new spaces where abortion is accessible.
Harkema said that architects and designers have a responsibility to lend their skills to reproductive justice movements, noting that her students were especially inspired when working on the exhibit.
“Human reproductive rights are defined by one’s constructed environment—their geographic location, their access to transportation networks and infrastructures of care, the built spaces in which care is provided,” said Harkema.
Considering that travel for out-of-state abortions more than doubled in 2023, access to reproductive care is indeed a spatial issue. The exhibition is filled with maps demonstrating this:
The exhibition included artistic works such as Michelle Browder’s Mothers of Gynecology monument and How to Perform an Abortion’s Trigger Planting in order to provide artistic entryways into reproductive justice discourse.
“Art has the power to reclaim narratives and present alternative imaginaries,” said Harkema.
Harkema said that when facing attacks on reproductive rights, it is necessary that organizers deploy all of their tools, how we think about design being one of them.
“For architects and designers, it’s important to recognize how the discipline can respond to the current political context around reproductive healthcare and work to enable access to care, despite the ongoing challenges and uncertainty,” said Harkema.
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