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6⃣️  Celebrating

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6th Dec. We celebrated our exhibition and gave prize to other groups.

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4⃣️ Interpretation

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5⃣️ Curating exhibition

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Consent, coercion, and constraint: exploring women’s freedom through objects which shape their bodies

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Consent, coercion, and constraint: exploring women’s freedom through objects which shape their bodies

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With all the different objects representing different ideas, we decided to put in 3 keywords of what we want to express so that the exhibition can have a clear ideological guidance.

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2nd Dec. We exchanged the peer-to-peer visitors opinion on our exhibition. According to the feedbacks, we decided to change our layouts to increase the exhibition's readability.

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2nd Dec. Deciding our layout style on group chat.

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3⃣️ Selecting exhibits

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2⃣️ Draft and refine 'Big Idea'

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Artifacts from the Science Museum collection shows oppress in women explores female freedom.

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1st Nov: Selecting artifacts from Science Museum Group for Women's Safety exhibition for display.

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We selected a broad range of artifacts, including medicines, medical devices, posters, photographs and objects. After making comments and click the checkbox on the artifacts, showing our interest in them, collection then finalized in the meeting.

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10th Nov: 2 versions of classifying the collections due to disagreements to the rage of artifacts we should include.

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10th Nov, group approved collections of artifacts.

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Divided the exhibits into 3 sectors.

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A chronological order timeline developed to sort the changes of medicines, reflecting on how society oppressed women. 

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29th Nov. By vote we agree on combine the two versions of exhibits collections and organized into a united theme: women's freedom.

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22nd Nov. After meeting with Helen, we decided to re-select exhibits from both versions together.

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Deciding the tone of the labels.

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Label tone: slightly serious and provocative

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Thalidomide capsules, find in Science Museum collection

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We first noticed this pills, due to the famous incident caused by this drug and how this medicine were "consent" to use, but due to the lack of information, this not only causes great harm to women physically but also psychologically.

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1st Nov. Meeting with Jade to refine our big idea.

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2nd Nov: Discussion of the issue about consent and information of consent in women's safety.

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14th Nov: wrote some interpretation of women's oppress and some panel contacts.

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Medical instruments and drugs used on women, raising concern about women's safety of health.

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11.01

subject: medical equipment etc

action: that they've been used on women

consequence: to do with women's views of themselves but also could be about women's safety etc etc

Medical objects have facilitated freedoms but have also contributed to the oppression of women.

Both in and outside of the medical institution, objects created to protect have been used against women for harm, by removing their agency and safety.

As a technology of the patriarchy, medical objects have worked to maintain the subordinance of women in history, into the present, and, given the continued domination of the ideologies which allow this to occur, into the future.

@lizzy

Medical instruments and drugs have been used on women throughout the centuries, often without patients' will or full understanding of effects of a given procedure or drug. As a result, the wellbeing of patients was affected and the sense of agency towards their bodies denied.

@emilia

Women often experience adverse reactions to drugs and are even maliciously injected with drugs that are harmful to women's health. Women's self-protection has long been discussed, but it's still needed today.

Although technology and awareness continue to advance, promoting drug safety for women is also on the agenda. But there are women who continue to be victimized and lose control of their bodies.

While women's awareness of self-protection is increasing, men and society as a whole should also respect women's right to control themselves.

@meiqi Yang

the action could also be that the objects remove safety and agency in addition to the fact the objects are used to help and harm women.

Also, that's definitely the consequence technically, but the consequence in this exercise needs to be about "why should people care", so maybe something about the insidious nature of how medical objects work to keep women oppressed under patriarchy as well would work, as this highlights why it is important to look at how these objects have been used and how they continue to be used against women

After meeting with Jade

about consent

as uses of medical equipment / medication can sometimes be against their consent or because they have little choice in the matter. This extends to media equipment being used outside of a medical institution for harm with a theme more similar to sexual assault, like FGM or the recent injections. If it is about agency, it is about consent

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11.01 subject: medical equipment etc action: that they've been used on women consequence: to do with women's views of themselves but also could be about women's safety etc etc Medical objects have facilitated freedoms but have also contributed to the oppression of women.

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The use of medical equipment or drugs without women's consent or consent without full knowledge of the side effects can be harmful.

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Interpretations: panels and sectors subtitle

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The first draft we had on the panels' interpretation, but it quickly get overdraw because it can't really presented our big idea.

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Panel 1：主题引入

Big idea's elaboration

While women's awareness of self-protection is increasing, men and society as a whole should also respect women's right to having control over themselves. We urge for awakens.

Panel 2: born

This sector displays what women's choice were and how they used these medications to owned control over their own bodies in medical development.

Women's self-protection has long been discussed, and it's still needed today. Although technology and awareness continue to advance, promoting drug safety for women is also on the agenda. But there are women who continue to be victimized and lose the sense of agency towards their bodies.

Women has more chooses now, some of them were harmful to their bodies, but the alternatives were even worst. They have been given consent, but it's really consent when there are no choices?

Panel 3: beauty

Panel 4: identity

This part includes society stereotypes to women, some of which are even unconscious, this kind of "health" is deeper which can be called "identity health". How society uses advertisements ， aesthetics ，hierarchy to shape women's self-identity and building fixed stereotypes of women makes it boring. We should be free and encouraged to be many kinds of identities, instead of mother, beauty toy, or something like that under the male gaze.

Labels

Notes

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Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

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1⃣️ Topic preparation stage

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Now that times have changed, we call attention to women's health. The exhibits show the changes and rise of women's consciousness awoken in different generations.

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The image of female developed under male's prospective. Showing under the influence of historical background, what did women do in order to be consider as "beautiful" .

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After searching and discussing, we found that the first topic was not feasible. In the end we choose female safety as we though it was more relevant to the Science Museum Group selections because the relation between medicines or medical equipments and women's safety.

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11st Oct. First offline group meeting. We picked out two choices.

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25th Oct. We made our final decision for our topic.

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Cream and Pink Pastel Gradient Diversity Workshop Webinar Keynote Presentation

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2nd Dec. Group chat to share other's feedback.

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22nd Nov. Writing interpretations together.

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We update the padlet with all the objects we have chosen. After everyone choose 3 objects to write the label. We then decide who is writing which object panels.

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10th Nov, we created a timeline for the list of things to do.

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Selected topic background

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28th Nov. We finished our labels writing.

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(Nottinghamshire Police investigate 15 reports of needle spiking, 2021)

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We start our exhibition due to this recent incident as uses of medical equipment and drugs can sometimes be against women consent.

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5th Nov. Picked everyone's part in the presentation.

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News article

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Would you take the pill if there were other options? Do you need a tiny waist, or did the patriarchy make you think so? What if you had to take medication for a disease that does not exist?

Created by five MA students, this exhibition explores women's freedom, and lack thereof. Through reflecting on their relationship with the objects which have shaped their bodies across the ages and globe, the selection of objects reflects on intricacies of consent and bodily autonomy.

Structured like the female body, the exhibition includes objects which have impacted women from head to toe. From anti-hysteria pills, to the first commercially available contraceptive pill, to a foot binder from 19th-century China, the exhibition also draws on a vast range of objects spanning spatial and temporal bounds.

The exhibition invites you to question your view of consent and freedom, and the covert and overt nature of constraint or coercion. The objects provoke the idea that women have a complex relationship with freedom and choice, and that the latter does not always equal the former.

How might this exhibition impact your view of your own freedom and consent? View now to find out.

Visit the online exhibition

Consent, Coercion, and Constraint is part of a wider series of exhibitions and projects undertaken by MA students from the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies as part of an Interpretations course module.
Visit the exhibition.
Image

Detail from poster entitled 'Women beware of Man made Medicine', London, England, 1978-1980. 2009-101. Science Museum Group Collection Online. Accessed January 4, 2022. Creative Commons 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

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Consent, Coercion and Constraint: exploring women's freedom through objects that have shaped their bodies

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Created by five MA students, this exhibition explores women's freedom, and lack thereof. Through reflecting on their relationship with the objects which have shaped their bodies across the ages and globe, the selection of objects reflects on intricacies of consent and bodily autonomy.