The Productive Fertility Clinic; Instruction I Video, detail of performance/installation, 2000
In 1998, I donated my eggs anonymously. This experience was blissful on many levels, aside from the slightly uncomfortable feeling of my ovaries being the size of ripe oranges, which were jostling about in my bloated belly. The process was visually amazing because I had the opportunity to chart the growth of the gracious ova through a bi-weekly ultrasound, and ultimately was allowed to view the extraction using sonogram. It crammed my creative lobes full with a visual vernacular that I have fluffed and folded into my art. What I was not expecting was the emotional and intellectual tug of war. I questioned my own particular intentions, the motivation of the medical industry, and of course the social impact of the obsession over fertility. My work for the past two years is a direct response to this self-examination, and the graphic aesthetic offered by bio-medical imaging technology that I am so willingly seduccd by.