LActation Room, a series of events under the umbrella of CURRENT:LA FOOD that unfolded over five weekends in fall 2019, explored the ways we talk about and engage in feeding infants and toddlers. Blurring the boundary between public and private space, LActation Room addressed lactation and first foods as subjects of public health and parenthood as a field for community building and imagination.

Each weekend, I worked with artists, activists, health workers and other professionals as well as the public during a variety of activities including creating portraits of caretakers, recording stories of infant feeding, and engaging in information sharing about lactation and nutrition. LActation Room offered a lively and critical space for exchange around lactation, first foods, labor, and family-making.

For more details on the events, as well as for recordings and documentation, please visit currentlactationroom.com


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Throughout the events of LActation Room I collected donations of feeding related textiles (burp cloths, bibs, nursing bra pads, etc.) that I sew into a giant Burp cloth, which served as a gathering place for a collective ‘feed-in’ on the last weekend. 


Burp cloth
2019
textiles, yarn, time; 124 x 114 inches

(detail)

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Letdown curtains is a series of curtains showing images that inspired me to 'let-down' while pumping milk when away from my child. The slightly dehumanizing act of productivity, the chore of using a machine to pump milk from one's body into plastic bags, is said to be alleviated by looking at photos of your own child or of relaxing scenery in order to produce the hormone oxytocin and to unwind enough as to allow milkflow to start. Mimicking a domestic object, the work asks questions about the location and (in)visibility of physical and emotional labor of mothers.


Letdown curtains
series
2019
textile, analogue photograph; 49 x 60 inches