The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst adds a video, “Housewives Making Drugs” (2017) by the artist Mary Maggic to their collection. “What if it was possible to produce estrogen in the kitchen?” — this question is explored in artist Mary Maggic’s video work “Housewives Making Drugs” (2017). In this fictional online tutorial Jade Phoenix and Jade Renegade demonstrate how everyone who cannot or does not want to afford expensive hormone treatments can extract estrogen on their own. The work is part of Mary Maggic’s larger project “Open Source Estrogen”, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research venture combining biohacking with speculative design. The project calls into question the ostensible neutrality of science and spotlights the ways in which the sexual hormone estrogen is misused for the exercise of biopolitical power.
April 2021