Spot the Difference

Two glass jars; blood from the artist when they’d been an unraped person for the majority of their life; blood from the artist when they’d been a raped person for the majority of their life.

Two small, identical glass jars on a white pedestal. They have black rubber corks and a small internal chamber. There is a crumbled black-ish substance in each jar's chamber.

Shown in "a cut ting, inci sion" two-person show with Madelyn Turner at Julian Gallery.

Spring 2023 was the anniversary of a sexual assault I experienced at 16; I was then 32. Leading up to the date, I felt consumed with a question: what would happen when my lived experience slipped from a majority as a non-raped person to a minority? I felt I needed to collect evidence of these two states. It was only immediately after the blood was collected, just before and just after the exact time and day, that I realized the question in and of itself lives in an essentialist space I don’t agree with.

The blood is different, and it is the same. The vials are indistinguishable, even to me.