FOUND (abortion) MONUMENT
Unison Arts Sculpture Garden, New Paltz
Maureen Connor, Landon Newton, Kadambari Baxi with Eugenia Manwelyan
Collaborative Project: as members, Artist Collective: how to perform an abortion
For exhibition "Owning Earth” curated by Tal Beery (2021-2022)
Chord Installations by Tree Weaves
Project Interns: Shannon Hui, Jumanah Abbas, Rachel Fischer
Found (abortion) Monument, maps abortifacient and emmenagogue plants in an existing wild meadow at the Unison Sculpture Garden, New Paltz, NY. Color-coded strings create patterns over the meadow on similar medicinal herbs and plant clusters. Signage and plant labels contain QR codes that link to botanical names and abstracted individual plant specimens on an Instagram album that further reveal short text blurbs on reproductive rights activism and milestones. Highlighting the ubiquitous nature of these plants, the installation proposes that every field and meadow where wild plants and abortifacients grow, literally as “weeds,” can be claimed as monuments to abortion. Further, arguably forgotten information on abortion activism and reproductive rights worldwide can also be resurfaced as additional "found" monuments.