CORE EXHIBITION → ENDO IN ART → RACHAEL JABLO
Rachael Jablo
Artist in exhibition Breaking this silence
Rachael Jablo is a chronically ill, queer, Jewish, Berlin-based American artist and educator who works with storytelling, photography, installation, and collage to discuss issues around illness, the body, and gender.
Her work has been seen in a solo exhibition at USC’s Hoyt Gallery, at the Torrance Museum, and at the Museum für Fotographie in Braunschweig and has been featured in Ever-Emerging Magazine, on WNYC’s The Takeaway, and Slate. She published her photographic monograph about chronic migraine, My days of losing words, with Kehrer Verlag in 2013.
Photo: Isabella Reyes
Jablo’s recent work, The Hysteria Project, received a Neustart Kultur Grant for Innovative Arts from the German Government in 2021-2022. The artwork was also showcased in the exhibition Breaking this silence.
The hysteria project
The Hysteria Project is a one-on-one storytelling project dealing with menstruation, reproductive, and pelvic disorders, illustrated by individual ‘portraits’ of their reproductive organs based on their stories. These life-size, intimate works start in a traditional darkroom where Jablo uses lace instead of negatives to make color prints that I cut up and collage onto a gold leaf background.
The process of actively listening to people tell their stories, sometimes for the first time, is as vital as the actual artworks. Many have suffered silently for many years. Some of them were taught by their mothers that their pain and excessive bleeding were normal, because that’s what their mothers, in turn, were told about their own bodies. Some had never talked to anyone, because in many cultures menstruation just isn’t talked about. And the thing that virtually all of us share is having our experiences dismissed by the medical community.
Video language: English with English subtitles.
Photo: The Hysteria Project.
Portrait of Rachael Jablo in front of The Hysteria Project, BAG Gallery. Photo: Isabella Reyes
Close up of The Hysteria Project installation, featuring uterus portraits of (clockwise from center top) Denitsa, Alex, Carys, Carly.
“My endometriosis story started when I was 23 years old. I had a menstrual that lasted for about four weeks, so my mom rushed me to the hospital. The doctors said they didn't understand how I was still walking around and functioning because I had lost so much blood. They rushed me off into the emergency surgery to see what I had going on. They thought it was polyps, but it turned out to be endometriosis.”
– Yatta (she/her, 40, Black, in US).
