09/05/2026
The Art of Rage | by Dr. WhiteFeather Hunter “The female (or AFAB) body is not biological waste.
Menstrual fluid has long been culturally constructed as contaminating, excessive, disposable. But biologically, it contains living cells, including regenerative cell populations with signiticant new research potential.
In my work, as a lab-based feminist bioartist, menstrual materials are far more than contested subjects of artistic representation. I bring them directly into the laboratory as active materials for tissue engineering, biotabrication, and the construction of speculative anatomies.
This changes the question.
Instead of just asking what these cells can become through my hours, days, weeks, months, YEARS of experiments, I also critically ask why some biological materials are recognized as scientifically valuable while others are dismissed before their possibilities can be explored.
Part of my previous doctoral research began with the query: What forms of knowledge start to become possible when we stop treating reproductive materials as biohazardous waste? How can we rewrite the narratives that maintain stigma and under-representation in research and within the broader culture?”
