An exhibition by second year MFA Candidate, Madison Higgs

September 28-October 9 | Reception October 8, 6-8pm

Kresge Art Gallery 101, 600 Auditorium Rd. East Lansing, MI

All the bloody barriers pulls you into a world where instead of hiding menses, wrapping it up tightly in some toilet paper, it’s dragged into the light, shoved in your face. My goal is to highlight the absurdity of wrapping up something so monumentally important in something so dainty, lacey, and pretty. Toilet paper is always imprinted, a little flower on the plastic tampon applicator, a paisley design on the inside of a pad. What’s the point? I won’t even see it.

The brand of maxi pads I’ve used since I was sixteen. What’s it made of? Not just cotton.

Cellulose, Polyethylene, Hydrocarbon Resin/Resine Hydrocarbonee, Polyester, Styrene/Isoprene Copolymer, Titanium Dioxide, Styrene/Butadiene Copolymer, Polypropylene, Polyester Resin, Butylene/Ethylene Copolymer, Pigment Violet 23, Pigment Blue 15, Pigment Black 7, PEG-10 Castor Oil, Quaternium-80, PEG-15 Cocoate, Diethylhexyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate, Zinc Oxide, Pigment White 6, Potassium Stearyl Phosphate, C20-40 Alketh-10, Pigment Red 146, Pigment Red 122, Pigment Yellow 155

Twenty-six ingredients for a maxi pad. Most of which I can’t pronounce, including seven different pigments.