I Came to See the Damage That Was Done and the Treasures That Prevail

2022

Antonia Wright, Women in Labor (Graphic Score), 2022, Unique cyanotype photograms on watercolor paper 22 x 30 in. each, Installation Image from solo exhibition at Spinello Projects

I Came to See the Damage That Was Done and the Treasures That Prevail, a solo exhibition at Spinello Projects, presents a breath of work Wright created over the last several years as a fierce reaction to the women’s reproductive rights crisis embodied in resistance and beauty, vulnerability and power.

As an artist, mother, and board member of Planned Parenthood, Wright presents her newest digital artwork installation, Women in Labor, a generative sound art composition that uses data sonification to protest the changing laws around access to safe and legal abortion. Through computational algorithms, the piece sonifies the increase in mileage a woman will now have to travel to access care. Partnering with midwives, the artist has been collecting the sounds women make during labor starting with her own home birth experience in 2015.

The exhibition’s title is a line taken from Adrienne Rich’s poem Diving into the Wreck which also includes performative videos using Wright’s pregnant body, large format cyanotypes made with the figure and light, and sculpture.