Vero Rose Smith
Vero Rose Smith now lives and works in Chicago, IL but has deep ties to Iowa City, Iowa, where she earned her first graduate degree and where she taught and curated for nearly five years post-graduation. She pokes at the barrier between the quantitative and the qualitative through data-driven paintings, installations, and performances. Please contact the artist directly for purchase inquiries.
University of Iowa, MA Art History 2014
Instagram: VeroRose.Smith
Website: verorosesmith.com
Artist Statement
Many hands, all hands. Hands tied, fingers crossed. Helping hands. Handouts. Out of hand. Handful.
Hands on.
Hands off!
As I enter the third trimester of my first pregnancy, I am thinking about touch and about the intersection of the medical and the mystic, the beating heart of the village and the bleeding body politic.
Pregnancy has forced me into more contact with our medical system over the last six months than I have had in the previous decade. The simultaneous sterility of obstetric environments and the messiness of growing another person, of navigating our health care system is striking.
Nitrile gloves as blue as the Mantle of Mary.
Virgin, whore, maybe mother.
I am lucky to have chosen this pregnancy, to have been able to exercise the choice to be pregnant or not for most of my adult life. Bodily autonomy should not be a matter of luck. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022 determined that there is no constitutional right to seek abortions, access to reproductive health care has become a patchwork of regulatory confusion.
This installation consists of 6 pieces related to statistics about pregnancy, abortion, and violence against women, and an additive piece that invites participation and reflection.
