The New Fruitbasket
PRODUCTIVE REPRODUCTION
Project 8 weeks
​
Category:
Concept, product
and photography
How would you feel when you have a childswish / kids and you want to get a job while knowing you won’t be treated equaly or knowing that when you are a mom you don’t get the guarantee of getting your job back.
Productive reproduction is an installation making pregnancy discrimination visable to open discussion and activate change.
​
43% of dutch working women have dealt with pregnancy discrimination on the work field. That’s 65.000 women. Only 1 out of 7 women report their bad experience because it’s hard to prove. It’s time to give these women a stage and make their stories visible to the world.
Productive Reproduction is a representation of the female’s fertility and the moment when pregnancy discrimination starts.
​
​
​
The installation made out of pregnancy tests stand for the fertility, the exitement, happiness and let down that comes with a childswish. The installation tells the stories from 50 women across the country. Their experiences, good and bad help the viewer understand what it is like and how it could also be.
​
​
THE SETTING
The installation is made to be mobile and placed in public spaces to confront and also inform the viewers. From a distance you won't be able to read the pages or see that it is made of hundreds of pregnancytests, positive and negative. This is to not only draw the curiosity of the public and invite them to come close. But also because of respect for the personal stories written.
Productive reproduction asks attention for the issue by creating an intimate moment between the viewer and the stories of all these women.
​
The handmade papers are made out of +/- 50 pregnancy tests per paper, the papers with positive pregnancy tests ( 2 pink stripes ) tell the story of a pregnant women or mothers. The ones made out of negative tests tell the story of women not pregnant, without children.
​
The lay-out from the papers is based on the motivational letter that is send to companies, the first moment that a company gets an impression of a woman and is able to judge.