One Child Policy:

"A Woman's Price"  | Artist Statement 

What do women have to do with the price of tea in China? The population of China was booming during the 1970s due to its flourishing agriculture. However, the massive growth outpaced the food production, which led to one of the worst famines in history. Millions of people starved to death, which resulted in the One Child Policy.

I stuffed used tea bags in a bird cage to show the loss of reproductive rights. The string was torn from the tea bag, just as fertility was ripped from victims of the One Child Policy. My hands are later shown in red paint to represent the blood-stained hands of the doctors who had performed countless abortions, infanticides, and hysterectomies, shown as a pile of strings. The neat stack of tea bags soon became a messy pile of waste. Even worse, many women would have their first child and be completely unaware they were to be sterilized. For the government, population control was more important than providing proper care for women.