For centuries, people have searched for ways to avoid 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.

Why do they take the risk? 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 conceptualises the dangers and damages caused by women’s lack of legal, safe and free access to abortion, highlighting 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.

BIOGRAPHY
Laia Abril is a multidisciplinary artist working with photography, text, video and sound. After graduating from college with a degree in journalism, she moved to New York to focus in photography and the telling of intimate stories which raise uneasy and hidden realities related with sexuality, eating disorders and gender equality. Her work has been shown internationally, and is held in private collections and museums around the world. Abril has received grants and awards, including the Revelación Photo España Award, Fotopress Grant and Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro for her exhibition at Les Rencontres d’Arles (2016) A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion. She has published several books, and is currently developing further chapters of the History of Misogyny project.