Mademoilselle

Mademoilselle suggests that the taking of birth control by women is a form of social control that manifests within the domestic sphere. Women have no choice but to manage their biology, but how they are seen to manage it; through a medical gaze and societal expectations and interferences of those watching, is where this work is situated ¹ . It’s about influence and the inherited understanding that a woman’s body exists for the pleasure of others, and must always be prepared and available. This can result in intimacy becoming political. Mademoilselle attempts to reveal the experience through the reconceptualization of an heirloom quilt.

The artwork is created to look like an heirloom. Fertility is part of the domestic realm, so a quilt (often an heirloom) used as a bedspread has a place here. Within the logic of a quilt, the appearance of the birth control packaging, called a Dialpak, looks similar to a crocheted rosette; a crafted decoration often made to adorn a bedspread. The quilt is suspended within an abstracted metal bed frame and lit from above so that the quilt casts a distinct shadow of itself across the floor underneath.

The final component of the installation is a large stop motion projection on the gallery wall of a DialPak continually clicking around its dial, repetitively stroking each day of a 21 day fertility cycle. Like the predictability of a clock, or the passage of the moon, it endlessly repeats its cycle. The metaphor of “woman’s work” (crochet and quilting are traditionally within the category of woman’s labour) cyclical routine and fertility within the domestic sphere, are connected within this artwork.