Click the image above to view the artwork I was commissioned to do for Chemical Entanglements at UCLA
The UCLA's Center for Study of Women's Chemical Entanglements project has been an incredible, transformative, and inspiring exploration of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). It is a groundbreaking, multidisciplinary and multi-year research initiative into the impact of chemical toxins, particularly on women, bringing "together scientists, community based researchers, artists, documentarians, and policy makers to probe the gendered impacts of chemical exposures." I was fortunate enough to participate in this project over several years. Here is a brief video introduction:
I participated in the 2017 symposium by giving a poetry reading via video and by creating MCS awareness artwork that was displayed at their Symposium in May, 2017. I subsequently published the poem I read at that Symposium in the Spring, 2020 issue of Catalyst (you can see it here).
A lot of video from the symposium is here, and you can read about this incredible, multi-year project via the Center for Women at UCLA.
You can find the commissioned artwork I did for the project, to raise awareness on chemical toxicity and multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), here and get more context on the artwork here.
From the Chemical Entanglements mission statement:
Chemical Entanglements brings together scientists, community based researchers, artists, documentarians, and policy makers to probe the gendered impacts of chemical exposures. In what ways have sex, gender, and reproduction become sites of intense interest for those studying the effects of toxic chemicals on human health? What models, methodologies and mechanisms have been developed to understand the role of environmental exposures as a factor in non-communicable diseases and chronic illnesses? While women have been at the forefront of environmental activism, they have also been marginalized and ridiculed when raising the alarm regarding the incautious circulation of untested and poorly tested chemicals. Furthermore, through feminized roles, women have been disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals that have been explicitly marketed to women and structured around the reinforcement of gender and racialized beauty norms. How have economic and racial disparities as well as global North/South divisions rendered certain populations more vulnerable to exposures from pesticides, carbon emissions, ambient formaldehyde, polluted waterways, and personal care products, to name a few sources? Through discussion of these intersectional issues, Chemical Entanglements aims to develop tools to educate clinicians, workplaces, and the next generation on the state of the science, barriers to effective regulation, models of activism and community outreach, under-recognized sources of exposure to EDCs (endocrine disrupting chemicals) in the built environment, and best practices to address non-communicable diseases that such chemicals induce as well as social barriers to accessibility.
