An open-ended commission to contribute a piece to “Trigger”, a multidisciplinary online project.

This piece is part body painting, self portraiture, performance, digital collage, and is accompanied by a three part written piece, comprised of two poems and an essay, and a stop-motion video.

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Trigger is a multidisciplinary online project that explores the juxtaposition of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade and the unprecedented fifty-one school shootings within the same year. Overturning Roe removes child-bearing bodies' agency to seek safe abortion as health care. Child-bearing bodies have become more regulated than the firearms used freely to kill innocent civilians, children included. More than before, many are forced to either risk their own lives in an unsafe abortion or bear children against their will, whose young lives are precarious in today's unregulated violence.

The project title refers to both a gun's literal trigger and the emotional triggering of these events, particularly for the bodies whose autonomy has been directly threatened.

This project invites a response to this situation, from artists in their medium of choice. 

Though this project takes a pro-choice stance, it is not meant to argue for or against abortion/gun control, but rather offer several perspectives to richen a widespread discussion about violence, reproductive justice, and freedom. Viewers and listeners are welcome to engage with this project as a choose-your-own adventure experience. I hope it offers catharsis, healing, resonance, solidarity, and astute honesty to its audience, in the name of moving forward with solidarity and compassion.

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." -- César Cruz

-Maddi