Jasmine Alicia Carter paints her mandalas exclusively in shades of red and brown. This is because of the special liquid she paints with.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00This is the medium Jasmine Alicia Carter paints with.
00:05Still perfectly fresh, watery, dark crimson red.
00:10It's blood, her own.
00:14This is my period blood, and I paint with it.
00:18After every cycle, the artist processes her experiences and feelings of the past month through her painting.
00:25In 2016, she started painting with her own menstrual blood.
00:29But she had to get used to the idea first.
00:34Okay, am I really doing this? This is really weird, you know?
00:37Like, I'd never seen something like this, I just felt the urge, and I was just having this willingness of,
00:41I want to go deep, because my periods are just so painful.
00:45They have been so painful.
00:47I had to get cocktails of medicines in the hopes to make it go away,
00:52and mostly times, not even the meds could help.
00:56And this constant feeling of having to hide them, and just not understand where to put them,
01:02like, it was just too much.
01:05Art has helped Jasmine Alicia Carter.
01:08She paints with a brush, or with her fingers on watercolor paper.
01:13She collects her blood with a menstrual cup, and can keep it in the fridge for several days.
01:21When Jasmine started painting at age 25, she had no precedence to follow,
01:26so she developed her own techniques.
01:31It just has this aliveness, it just goes where it has to go in a certain way.
01:37And it also makes it a little bit difficult, because I need to understand it.
01:40Sometimes it's a little bit more slimy, sometimes it's a little bit more liquid and ready,
01:45so I just have to kind of flow with it in a certain sense.
01:49Sometimes I have to separate the more slimy part from the more reddish part.
01:54Like, it's something that requires a lot of work, and I love that.
02:00I personally love it so, so, so, so much.
02:07Many of my clients say, I'm having so many clots, how can I resolve this issue, right?
02:11So, it has to come with also taking care of your womb health.
02:15So, it's a side effect.
02:17Part of having such a beautiful pigment of blood to be able to create nice artwork
02:23is also in parallel to have a very healthy womb.
02:31For Jasmine, her art goes beyond the personal.
02:34As a body mentor, she tries to encourage others to get to know their own bodies.
02:39She's even founded a movement for menstrual art.
02:43But on social media, her work is not always well received.
02:51I also receive blackmail sometimes.
02:53Sometimes they tell me, you should never come to my country or we will jail you, we will slaughter you.
02:59Like, they get really deep into this.
03:01They curse me all possible ways.
03:04Everything about the woman is considered so taboo.
03:13Breaking the taboos surrounding menstruation is also the theme of an exhibition
03:17at Berlin's Museum of Europäische Kulturen.
03:20The exhibition deals with issues like hygiene products
03:24and the shifting social attitudes towards women's periods through the ages.
03:29Curator Jana Wittenzelner has also created a space for discussion about menstruation.
03:38It concerns half of humankind directly and the other half indirectly.
03:42And what it's about when we talk about menstruation is in fact least of all the blood itself.
03:48The core of the matter?
03:50Everyday objects, the topics and discourses
03:53and much, much more that we come into contact with on a daily basis.
04:01Many of the pieces on exhibit come burdened with norms and preconceptions about the menstrual period.
04:07Artists' representations also reveal the ways menstruating women are politically disadvantaged
04:12and routinely stigmatized.
04:15Art could lift the taboos on the topic and encourage greater visibility.
04:28The exhibition is shocking and forces people to ask why some are repulsed by menstruation.
04:37For Jasmin, menstrual painting is a way to feel more in tune with her entire body.
04:45The artist is now grateful for the period she once found so painful and hated.
04:54For me, bringing a period that is something so stigmatized, that is something so taboo,
04:59that is something that has so much charge for so many people
05:04and put it into a context of beauty is so healing on its own.
05:10And it's part of my message and how I want to bring forth my message into the world.
05:18Through her art, both aesthetic and controversial,
05:21Jasmin Alicia Carter turns the spotlight on women's menstrual cycles
05:25and invites people to shift their perspective.