(In) Fertile Idioms (ongoing series)

This early series attempts to intervene between the visual and verbal within Infertility. It uses the rhetorical devices of abstract idioms, alongside clichéd imagery often seen within infertility practices. As a phrase that presents a non-literal meaning, idioms can be completely unintelligible to someone hearing them for the first time, like much of the medicalised verbal language common to infertility. Clichés, however, are expected, predictable, and overused to the point of losing their original effect, like much of the dominant visual language from the commercialised infertility industry

Revolving around Eggs, these pieces intervene within the ways in which this object is often used as a symbol to sell highly emotive ‘natural’ images of maternal hope, by challenging the typical imagery and pairing it with titles of expressions which are deeply embedded within our culture and decipherable only by those who have acquired the correct knowledge. Read together, these attempt to confound conventional interpretations of the narratives of reproduction by encouraging slippages of meaning, making room for the nuances of this sub-maternal experience.