This work centers on a painting created through the use of my menstrual blood as both material and symbolic source. The act of painting with blood positions the body not as metaphor but as direct medium, collapsing the distance between lived physiology and artistic expression. In this context, menstrual blood is not treated as shock or provocation, but as a return to origin material: a cyclical substance historically coded as abject, yet biologically tied to creation and renewal. The painting becomes a record of that tension, between cultural conditioning that frames the menstrual body as something to conceal, and an artistic impulse to reclassify it as sacred, intelligent matter.

The symbolism of the work is rooted in reorientation: what it means to use what is typically expelled, hidden, or deemed “impure” as the primary carrier of mark-making. The gesture asks the viewer to confront their own inherited associations with the body, cleanliness, and value. It is not positioned as transgression for its own sake, but as a recalibration of perception, where the material most intimately associated with femininity, rhythm, and biological intelligence deserves to be seen and honored. In doing so, the painting destabilizes the hierarchy between what is considered worthy material and what is considered waste.

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