Artist Alina Bliumis was working in her West Side studio on June 24, 2022, when she heard a news segment announcing that the Supreme Court had struck down Roe v. Wade. She immediately embarked on a new group of paintings. Her now-completed series Plant Parenthood, on view at Situations Gallery in Manhattan’s Chinatown through April 3, depicts plants that women have used to terminate pregnancies for hundreds and thousands of years.

When Bliumis heard the verdict, she had just finished reading a book that discussed peacock flower, an abortifacient plant used by enslaved women in North America and the Caribbean. These women concocted a tea from the flower’s leaves, stems, and seeds.

“Two hundred years ago, before official medicine, before male doctors, women took care of their bodies themselves with herbal medicine,” Bliumis told Hyperallergic. “It was healers, witches, nuns. It wasn’t men’s business at all.”

Η συνέχεια εδώ.