Valentina Baché’s residency showcase!

OFFLEEP

This piece is a prayer for healing the quiet invasions of intimate procedures, those necessary violences we are asked to endure for the sake of health.

 Its pain lives inside a history of medicine shaped by exploitation, pap smears born from experiments on unconsenting people, contraceptives tested on marginalized bodies, a legacy that still shadows the present.

 Cold stirrups, a widening speculum, the acrid smell of burning flesh, all of it recalls a lineage of harm, sharpened by a surreal lack of information.

The body, in another context, still yearns to be entered. What does consent mean when your body must open on command. Through humor & tragedy I weaponize my body to strengthen and dream of possibilities where these procedures can someday become comfortable?