Since Roe v. Wade overthrow in 2022, the right to abortion in the United States has been severely restricted in several states, with a recent decision by a federal judge in Texas, to remove the abortion pill mifesterone from the market nationwide, before the Supreme Court. Today, artist Nancy Baker Cahill gives the overwhelming majority of Americans who support abortion rights a voice and an image: a bright red, explosive womb that appears, thanks to augmented reality technology (AR ), above the Supreme Court and choice state houses.
Given its coloration and branching shape, the uterus looks a bit like a lobster with fallopian tubes instead of claws. You can also see it as a bloody mess, as it shatters into fragments with a high-pitched cracking sound. The work is called State property (2023), a nod to how the womb has become the site of so much legislation and criminalization.
“The womb cracks because I wanted to highlight the violence of these laws and also the fracture of democracy,” says Baker Cahill. “This fight against abortion is directly tied to the dissolution of democracy through redistricting and the removal of voters’ rights – that’s not what the majority of Americans want.”
“These are punitive laws, misogynistic laws,” she adds. “This is a pro-birth or forced birth program.”
The artwork can be viewed on a smartphone via the free The 4th Wall app, which the artist created in 2018 for his AR projects, by anyone within a half-mile radius of the venues. By clicking “coordinates” in the app near the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, the womb will float above the Corinthian marble columns of the building, or perhaps land on the pediment.
“Geolocation can be a fickle beast,” says the artist, whose augmented reality work has its roots in both feminist Land Art and the history of political intervention. “I can install the work wherever I want, but sometimes it bounces. There’s a poetics to it that works with any kind of resistance movement, as dissenting voices can’t be contained.
As the womb is ready to hover near the Supreme Court building, Baker Cahill is finalizing its placement above government buildings in Texas, Nebraska, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina in the coming days.
Long a battleground state for human rights issues, Texas made headlines this month due to a judge’s ruling overturning the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifesterone, a abortion pill, which has been legally available for decades. The judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, is a Donald Trump appointee who has come under scrutiny for his extreme anti-abortion ideology and unscientific language, such as saying “unborn human” instead of “fetus”.
This week, an appeals panel of three judges and two Trump appointees agreed to some restrictions on the pill’s availability, but kept it on the market while the lawsuit by anti-abortion groups winds up. prosecute in court.
For most of the states on his list, Cahill Baker places the exploding womb above the building where the state legislature meets. In Texas, she plans to lay it atop Judge Kacsmaryk’s courthouse.
