Introduction

The question of who cares for the health of women, and how they are allowed to do so in this country’s hyper-polarized political landscape, has been an enduring battleground. The intensity of this struggle escalated all the more after the U.S. Supreme Court controversially overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, a decision that further restricted—or effectively ended—the right to choose for millions, including here in Texas.  In so doing, a key stalwart of medical choice and freedom within the ongoing storm of gender politics toppled, sending destabilizing tremors across the land. As I write, 2023 is coming to a close, and we take stock of an increasingly fraught landscape of personal wellbeing in the United States. There is little respite and ever more concern. To care for ourselves and our families is far beyond our own agency, restricted as we are by the ideological wrangling of third parties with personal knowledge of so few of us.  Art alone cannot change this course or rewrite policy, here or elsewhere, but it can crystallize swirling clouds of emotion and offer both catharsis and perspective. Art can open and, in so doing, provide a mirror for reflection and renewal.

The September 2022 exhibition Cared For at the Blaffer Art Museum presented the work of three artists who offered meditations on the politics and poetics that infuse medical practice, healthcare institutions, and healing processes. Shana Hoehn, Virginia L. Montgomery, and Sarah Sudhoff have all spent significant time living and working in Texas, and each shares work that reformulates our visual and conceptual models of remedy. Hoehn draws upon archival documents and historical photographs to interrogate how the diagnosis of psychosis has been applied—and weaponized—against women across eras. Sudhoff marries autobiography, performance, and ongoing research to confront the technologies that examine and penetrate female bodies within the medical enterprise. Montgomery expands further upon the historical apparatus of healing, orchestrating hypnotic video studies and soft sculptures that consider forms of spiritual healing for both the body and the planet. As a whole, at a time when the autonomy of women’s bodies has become (re)contested and both crisis and trauma feel perpetual, Cared For offers a space for rethinking how care is conceived and practiced.

Cared For (documentary)

The Art of Shana Hoehn

Over the last 15 years, Sarah Sudhoff’s attention to her health and body has figured prominently in her work. Sudhoff explains that “as recently as 2020, my HPV returned, and prompted me to undergo two colposcopies to gauge the severity of the infection. As a divorced, single mother of two preteen children, I have encountered financial challenges in accessing healthcare, relying primarily on Medicaid for care. As a stark reminder of this, in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic, the Texas legislature chose to vote to end women’s right to choose.”  

In one section of her show, Sudhoff strings together the directives to “CARE MORE” and calls for “MORE CARE” in capital letters, creating an increasingly urgent chant that echoes in our minds as we read—and see ourselves in—the mirrored vinyl. This is a mantra of both political want and protest, as well as a collective call to action. In her words, CAREMORECAREMORE “is a message to everybody to care more about your body, to care more about other people, and to care about what happens to other people’s bodies—especially women’s bodies—and to say that we need more access to care. Not only should we care about our own selves, but we should care about the collective.”

The Art of VLM (Virginia L. Montgomery)

Virginia L. Montgomery is an experimental artist moving freely between video, performance, and sculpture as she traverses materiality, sensory experiences, and metaphysics. Her work is feminist and latently autobiographical, creating experiences that are paradoxically both mysterious and direct. Montgomery’s surreal artworks often speak in recursive symbols—circles, holes, spheres—as she explores the relationship between archetypes and an elemental iconography of healing.

The film Honey Moon was originally produced for the Times Square program in New York City, where art videos play on multiple jumbotrons throughout the iconic arena for one minute at midnight. Coyly literal, the film was shot in a single, 170-second take and depicts a manicured hand cradling a small model moon as honey sensually streams into a void below.  It is a serene, sensory short film about the viscous flow of time and the holistic, medicinal properties that honey is said to contain—lavishly coating and cladding a symbol of enlightenment within the dark.

We live in an age that often feels more unreal than real, in which things seem to move faster than we can perceive them. As an artist, I wanted to do something different; I wanted to create a sculptural film that felt material, soothing, and real. The inspiration to hold the moon came from a dream. There, I touched the moon and found peace. Times Square moves so fast. Honey Moon asks that we slow down.

-Virginia L. Montgomery

Acknowledgments

Cared For was presented by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (September 29 – October 9, 2022), with support from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Cared For was organized by Steven Matijcio, former Jane Dale Owen Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum, and was generously supported by the University of Houston and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Artist Ryan Hawk was co-commissioned by these parties and University of Houston Libraries to produce the documentary video of the exhibition in this chapter. All images courtesy of the Blaffer Art Museum. Photos by Francisco Ramos.