Freedom Forms

Political art so often feels like a wish; Spatializing Reproductive Justice represented something like a real plan.

  • Spatializing Reproductive Justice was on view this summer at the Center for Architecture.

Spaces, like bodies, is one of those words that—when it appears in the context of cultural institutions or academia—has a terrible tendency to obscure more than it reveals, transforming alive and vital ideas into cold and inert objects. An architecture show titled Spatializing Reproductive Justice might be presumed, at first blush, to be just another abstract repackaging and deradicalization of a topic that happens to be of real, bloody importance to actual human beings. But architecture, as a field, is quite literally concerned with spaces and bodies, and at their best, architectural visions of the future consider how people actually live in and move through the built areas of the world. Spatializing Reproductive Justice constituted an example of the field operating on its best principles.

This small exhibition was an attempt to explore reproductive care in the United States as it is and as it could be. A joint production of student architecture studio…

Lyta Gold is a critic and fiction writer living in the very pretty and restful town of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her book Dangerous Fictions—about book bans, political art, and more—comes out in October.

Read 3 free articles by joining our newsletter.

Or login if you are a subscriber.

or
from $5/month