Menstruation the focus of Halifax art exhibit

A Halifax art exhibit is exploring a natural human function that’s widespread and yet, rarely talked about: menstruation.

Our Bodies, Our Blood, on display at Plan B until Sept. 30, features over 40 pieces submitted by artists from all different gender identities around the world, of all different mediums — everything from a needlepoint maxi pad to a paper mache diva cup.

It’s not the first time the topic has been explored artistically: artist Jen Lewis uses period blood to paint, while Rupi Kaur caused an uproar on Instagram after posting a photo of period-stained sweatpants, which taken down and later reposted.

The Halifax exhibit closely examines our relationship with the monthly cycle and encourages viewers to talk about it within a safe environment. Yahoo Canada News spoke to the exhibit’s curator and organizer Alanah Correia.

How did the theme of the exhibit come about?

Back in January I went to a fertility awareness workshop and learned a lot about the menstrual cycle that I didn’t anticipate. I was shocked by how little I knew about my own body. The information is out there but you’re not really pushed to learn about it. In Grade 5 you have sex ed for one week, and you learn all these scientific terms like fallopian tubes and ovaries and at that age it’s a requirement to learn about it. But by junior high and high school you forget most things. I wanted to create opportunities to learn about it and create a safe space to talk about it. It’s something that’s private and personal and for people who want to talk about it, there are not really a lot of places to do that.

I was making my own art pieces around (menstruation), and I thought well if I were to do a show with only my artwork, I’m only one person who experiences menstruation in my own way. I want to offer the opportunity for anyone who experiences menstruation because everyone has different body types, ethnicities. Everyone experiences it differently. I wanted to make it open to anyone and everyone, of all genders and sexes. Anyone could submit as long as it was relevant to menstruation.

How did you find artists to contribute?

I focused on Halifax but it definitely began circulating online. Artists were responsible for paying for shipping fees if they were submitting from elsewhere, but otherwise there were no artist fees to submit.

Did you accept all the submissions?

There’s really only one submission I had to say no to. There’s people who submitted who don’t menstruate, which is totally fine. But there was someone who doesn’t menstruate who submitted a performance piece that was a bit graphic that had nothing to do with menstruation. I had to flex my curatorial muscles and say thank you for submitting but it doesn’t fit with other pieces.

When you go in and see the show, there are so many different types of mediums, and pieces around so many different things on menstruation. I didn’t want to judge people on their artistic talents — it’s an opportunity for people to tell their stories and everyone’s story is valid. No matter how many people submitted, I didn’t want to put a limit on it. We expanded it to the hallways and put artwork in the front display window. We had to include all the artwork in there.

Anything surprise you about putting this show together?

It took me a while to get comfortable promoting it because of the nature of the project. I wanted to keep in mind that there are going to be people who aren’t going to like it. It was older women who react the most to it because they’ve been taught not to talk about it. But for something so private to go public, and have people talk about it, can be really liberation for other people. Definitely a wide range of reactions and no matter what the reaction, it’s all valid. But for the most part, it’s been really positive and supportive reactions.

Any online reaction?

Oh yes. I haven’t got any hate mail, which is good. Especially on Tumblr, where a lot of our stuff is posted, we have people re-blogging our stuff, people are sending in stories about their first periods, which we put in the zine and website. There’s been people posting articles and sharing things with each other. People from all over the world.

People out there are wondering if there will be another opportunity for them to present their artwork in something like this again, which I think would be amazing to do. Like the Vagina Monologues, where they go to city to city.

It would be amazing to bring this to other cities, because I think of all the stories that haven’t been told and all the stories that should be told. I wish we had more people to help so we could reach out to more rural areas. There are so many things we can do.