Launch 6pm Thu 3 May
Running 4-31 May
Talk 3-5pm Thu 3 May, by Photography/Archives/Ireland, at NCAD-Harry Clark Lecture Theatre
The Copper House Gallery
St Kevin’s Cottages, Synge Street, Dublin 8
Opening Hours Mon-Fri 9.30am-5.30pm/Sat 11-4:30pm
PhotoIreland Festival 2018 presents Laia Abril’s body of work On Abortion at The Copper House Gallery.
Under natural circumstances, the average woman would get pregnant about 15 times in her life, resulting in ten births. Seven of those babies would survive childhood. For centuries, people have searched for ways to delay or terminate pregnancy. Today, safe and efficient means of abortion finally exist, yet women around the world continue to use ancient, illegal or risky home methods: Every year, 47,000 women around the world die due to botched abortions.
Across countries and religions, millions of women are blocked from abortion technologies by law and social coercion, and are forced to carry pregnancies to term against their will. Some are minors and rape victims. For many, the pregnancy is not viable or poses a health risk. But all can be criminalized for trying to abort.
Laia Abril’s new long-term project A History of Misogyny is a visual research undertaken through historical and contemporary comparisons. In her first chapter, On Abortion, Abril documents and conceptualizes the dangers and damages caused by women’s lack of legal, safe and free access to abortion. Continuing with her painstaking research methodology, Abril draws on the past to highlight the long, continuous erosion of women’s reproductive rights to present-day. Her collection of visual, audio and textual evidence weaves a net of questions about ethics and morality, and reveals a staggering series of social triggers, stigmas, and taboos around abortion that have been invisible until now.
Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986) is a photographer, visual artist and bookmaker who studied Journalism in Barcelona, and photography in New York; she enrolled FABRICA’s artist residency where she worked at COLORS Magazine as a creative editor and staff photographer for 5 years. Her projects have been shown internationally including the United States, Canada, UK, China, Poland, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, France, Italy or Spain. Her work is held in private and public collections as Musée de l’Elysée and Winterthur Museum in Switzerland, Madame Figaro-Arles and FRAC in France or MNAC in Barcelona. Her work has been recognized with several nominations as Foam’s Paul Huf Award, Visionary Award, Magnum Foundation and Catchlight. Recently she has been awarded with Fotopres Grant, Premio Revelación PhotoEspaña and the Prix Madame Figaro for her exhibition at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2016, A History of Misogyny, chapter One: On Abortion. After working for 5 years on her long-term project On Eating Disorders, Abril has started her new project A History of Misogyny, which first chapter On Abortion was published by Dewi Lewis in Paris Photo.
The exhibition has been kindly sponsored and printed by The Copper House Gallery, and Laia Abril’s presence has been supported by the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin.
Laia Abril receives the Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award 2018 for A History Of Misogyny, Chapter 2: On Rape Culture. The Visionary Award is designed to foster innovative approaches to storytelling and supports visionary individuals who we hope will offer inspiration to others by example.