Artist Statement

Blood, Lead, and Tears is a multimedia installation responding to the 2024 study “Tampons as a source of exposure to metalloids” by Jenni A. Shearston, which found that most large-name tampon brands had unsafe concentrations of toxic heavy metals (such as lead, cadmium, and arsenic). Due to the absorptive tissue within the vagina, these metals have the ability to directly enter the body’s bloodstream, and cause potential for ample biological harm.

Using Polaroid film, I photographed a wide range of menstruating subjects who have used tampons and degraded their image in chemical concentrations that reflected the amount of heavy metal they had been exposed to from these products. With the portrait standing in for each subject’s body, one can investigate how the exposure of heavy metals within tampons has deteriorated a variety of menstruating bodies over the course of their lives, and how it can be visually represented through physical degradation of the photographic object. 

This project aims to explore themes of both externally and internally driven misogyny, as well as the lack of education and respect for the menstruating body still prevalent. Despite being a normal bodily function that affects approximately 50% of the population, menstruation is considered taboo and disgusting, resulting in continued societal ignorance of the issue. Tampons have been marketed as the optimal product option for menstruation but continue to be pushed and produced without proper warnings; exposing people to years of bodily damage without acknowledgement or attempt to create a safer product.

See the installation here.