7 Days is an installation that both critiques the social stigma of menstruation and celebrates menstruation as a natural biological process.
DESCRIPTION
Too often are women embarrassed or ashamed to discuss their period in public due to the popular social belief that periods are ‘gross’ or ‘unclean’. According to a number of studies, the majority of young girls deem it inappropriate to talk about menstruation with their friends and family. By exhibiting this ‘menstrual panel’ as an art piece for a week (the average length of a woman's period), I tried to express how a woman’s menstruation is not something she must hide or be ashamed of--it’s simply a part of a woman's life. At the end of the seven days, I poured the colored water into each of the toilets in the College of Fine Arts' first floor bathroom. The almost performative gesture of women flushing the water causes them to be a part of the work.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
This installation uses the Arduino UNO to mechanically pump food coloring into a large panel of water at a scheduled time of day for exactly seven days.