A Glossary With(In)Fertile Terms
Printed text on paper with augmented reality matrices (36 scenes)
2025
This Glossary unfolds thematically over time rather than alphabetically, referencing a discursive space around the evolution of in/fertile language. It is aligned with a ‘typical’ 28-day biological menstrual cycle with its expansive parts across Menstruation, Follicular, Ovulation, and Luteal phases.
Hidden beneath this ordered surface is an imaginary archive documenting a collective telling by self-identified (in)fertile women, constructed from a range of contributor responses. This fragmentary narrative uses strategies of script and story to foreground embodied knowledges that intercept the performative narration of an “authoritative” rhetoric of fertility. It attempts to deconstruct hierarchies of knowledge across the medical and maternal and create space for an (in)fertile subjectivity that manifests within voices that are personal, vulnerable, and angry.
This piece has parts that exist in augmented reality, demanding the audience actively embody the work as viewer and reader, rather than passive spectator. Please use your phone to activate the QR matrices and generate this virtual trace in the gallery space.
I would like to thank the following contributors to this project, for trusting me with their words:
Amy Adkin, Rebecca J Burman, Alexandra Carter, Amie Corry, Tessa Heck, Grace Jackson, Leigh Kellmann Kolb, Lali Levanna, Melisah May, Kirstin McRae-Smith, Maureen Minard, Robyn Mosley, Nicole Narracott, Katherine Nolan, Joanna Peace, Holly Rankin Smith, Heather Michel Riddle, Hazel Simcox, Milou Stella, Nicky Teegan, Melanie Tomlinson, Morganne Van Voorhis.
