glitching reproductive injustice

This online exhibition is informed by reproductive justice, a feminist framework and transnational movement created by Black women and lead by BIPOC activists. Reproductive justice work challenges silence toward transgenerational histories and continued practices of reproductive discrimination, coercion, and violence, moving beyond individual “choice” toward collective equity and access. Reproductive justice advocate Loretta Ross defines the tenets of the reproductive justice movement as the human right to have children, to raise children & kin in safe and sustainable communities, to not have children, and the overall necessity of bodily autonomy, including self-determination surrounding gender and sexuality (2022).

In the digital age, reproductive health experiences world-wide are increasingly entangled with technologies, necessitating the examination of emerging forms of injustice, ranging from data-driven abortion surveillance to content suppression/censorship and disinformation campaigns related to reproductive/sexual health advocacy, to bias-laden laden AI-powered systems. These co-emergent phenomena exacerbate existing inequities, disproportionately harming marginalized communities.

Yet, activists in the global reproductive justice struggle (such as SisterSong, inroads, Women on Web, Fòs Feminista, and Shout Your Abortion) are simultaneously utilizing digital networks to share experiences, build solidarity, circulate information, and promote access to essential reproductive/sexual health services.

This virtual exhibition explores the potentials of art-centered digital reproductive justice advocacy/storytelling, drawing inspiration from Legacy Russell's Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020). Russell conceptualizes the glitch, a moment of technological non-compliance, as a form of feminist/queer intervention that challenges entrenched systems of oppression, emphasizes fluid selfhood, and mobilizes resistance through digitally engaged cultural production.

The artists featured in the exhibition represent a variety of geographies and communities, and they illuminate the multiple facets of reproductive justice. Their works explore themes such as historical/ongoing anti-Blackness, grassroots organizing and mutual aid, connections between natalism/anti-natalism and nationalism, gendered forms of labor and surveillance, queer eroticism, sexual pleasure and stigma, connections between the body and the land, colonialism and reproductive control, and expanded practices of care.