Zhaleh Phillips

Not Your Trophies

2020

Kingman, AZ

Yesterday, I saw that a beautiful, stoic and articulate nurse by the name of Dawn Wooten had alerted the press about a practice within at least one ICE detention center in Georgia by which mass forced hysterectomies were being performed. I was hardly able to breathe. I didn't connect that revelation with this billboard project until I sat down to begin the creation process, and all I could see was uteri being snatched away and put up on a mantle in jars like trophies. From there, I began to sketch and I began to formulate my question. Nurse Wooten had been asked several times by women held in the detention center questions like "Why did he take my uterus? There was nothing wrong with it" and "Is he the uterus collector?" and Nurse Wooten kept repeating "What am I supposed to say to that? How can I answer that question?" I pose these questions now to you. Who is The Uterus Collector? Is he the mastermind or the pawn? Why has ICE entrusted human beings to his overeager scalpel? What does ICE have to gain from a collection of uteri -- and/or from a collection of women stripped of their uteri?

Photograph by Andrew Gallery
Photograph by Andrew Gallery
Photograph by Andrew Gallery

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Unfinished

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