{"id":19669,"date":"2026-02-05T13:09:54","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=19669"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:11:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:11:04","slug":"feminist-interview-project-allison-grant-in-conversation-with-elizabeth-s-hawley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=19669","title":{"rendered":"Feminist Interview Project: Allison Grant in Conversation with Elizabeth S. Hawley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Feminist Interview Project<\/a>, organized by CAA\u2019s Committee on Women in the Arts<\/a>,\u00a0examines the practices of feminism by interviewing a range of scholars and artists. The project aims to preserve the living histories of feminist art practices, while interrogating and expanding the boundaries of what might be considered feminist. Throughout its interviews, this project reimagines the\u202fpossibilities of feminist practice\u202fand feminist futures by exploring a diversity of perspectives and approaches to research. This collection of\u202finterviews\u202faspires to critically examine the relationships between feminism, feminist art, and the lived realities of women, nonbinary and female-identified artists and scholars across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For our ongoing collaboration with Art Journal Open<\/em>, the Feminist Interview Project is excited to present artist Allison Grant in conversation with art historian and curator Elizabeth S. Hawley. The two met for a conversation over Zoom on November 19, 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth <\/strong>S. Hawley:<\/strong> I\u2019m speaking with Allison Grant, an artist, writer, curator, and Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Alabama. Her photographs address intersecting concerns around feminism, reproductive care, community solidarity, and environmental justice\u2014much to delve into! Allison, I’ll first ask you to introduce yourself and give us an overview of how you came to your photographic practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allison Grant:<\/strong> As you mentioned, I’m at the University of Alabama, and I live in Tuscaloosa. My artwork looks at environmental and social issues. I’m thinking about the possibilities of representing big issues\u2014climate change, toxic contamination, reproductive justice\u2014but also some of the difficulties that exist in doing that. These are broad and complex issues that exist in different ways globally, and one of the ways I’ve approached that is through thinking about the local and personal, and how I can connect with these issues in my own lived experience and inside of my community. And this intersects with many disciplines: ecology, feminism, queer theory, environmental science, human health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation for my work started when I was really young. I grew up in a house with acres of woods behind it in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I had this idyllic childhood where I would go outside and peek in foxholes, follow deer trails, and look up at the canopy of leaves, and I came to see ecology as this broad part of existence that in some ways intersected with me, and in some ways played out as its own force. Those earliest experiences really shaped me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school, I discovered photography and I just fell in love with this medium. I went to the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, for my bachelor’s degree. I spent a lot of time while I was there thinking about my experience of being in place, what it meant to be connected to the land, to be a woman in these changing landscapes there and back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I pursued a graduate degree at Columbia College Chicago. During that time, I created a body of work called Unsoiled<\/em><\/a> that looks at nature photography within visual culture\u2014especially the idea of nature as serene and valuable for its appearance. I started to question how photographic conventions operated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Ocean Sunset<\/em>, 2009. 40 x 30 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After graduating, I interned at the Museum of Contemporary Photography<\/a>, and was hired as an education and curatorial employee there. I did that for ten years, and then felt, especially after I had my first daughter, that I just couldn’t be with my art practice as much as I wanted. I decided to look for full-time teaching positions that would give me space for creative activity. I ended up coming to the University of Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> I’m glad you brought up the Unsoiled<\/em> series, which is how I first came to your work when we were collaborating on the Borderwaters<\/em><\/a> show, and I realized how aligned our interests are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll proceed with a standard Feminist Interview Project question: What is feminism to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> For me, it\u2019s a language for processing and expressing a set of lived experiences that intersect with my identity and sense of self, but also exist outside of me, and the way the world has reflected back to me who I am in relationship to who I think of myself being. There are so many texts, artworks, songs, and poems that have helped me to see aspects of my lived experience, and to articulate them in ways that feel incredibly powerful. And for me, that is the most powerful part of feminism; it\u2019s knowing other people have had similar experiences, gaining their brilliance in terms of articulating those things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also think it’s politics, right? It’s a way of not just articulating, but also pushing against the ways that power structures or other forces have made it difficult to have self-determination for certain people. Part of that politics is always a form of listening, a type of empathetic understanding and collaboration. Not all experiences of gender are the same; listening to others, trusting their accounts of their sense of reality, and thinking about the ways gender intersects with other lived experiences is important in forming community and collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice Johnson Reagon talks about a truly radical politics\u2014coalitional politics\u2014and feminism not being a home to its members.1<\/a><\/sup> There’s this sense of belonging that one can get from understanding that other people have shared identity and experiences with them, but feminism is also a space of disagreement, conflict, challenging presumptions, and it’s always moving and shifting and changing around us. This idea that it’s not a home, it’s a place that\u2019s meant to be uncomfortable sometimes, and that discomfort is a part of growth\u2014and belonging is a part of growth, too\u2014and that it offers many different experiences and ways of being in the world, is how I\u2019ve thought about feminism in my own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH: <\/strong>Ideas of collaboration, community, and challenge are a good segue into your recent and ongoing project, Holding Together<\/em><\/a>. This series features the arms and hands of people holding plants historically used in reproductive care. Would you explain how this project started, how it’s going, and\u2014I assume\u2014how it’s going to continue?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Lauren Holding Queen Anne\u2019s Lace<\/em>, 2024. 12 x 15 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> I\u2019m so glad you brought up the hands, because the community of people who show up in this work are so important\u2014as or more important than the plants. This project was really formed inside of community from its conception. I was talking with a friend, Pete Halupka<\/a>, a photographer and naturalist in Alabama. He mentioned that Queen Anne’s lace has been used historically as a type of birth control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as he said that, I could see this project immediately in my mind: people holding these flowers from Alabama. This was in 2024, before the Trump election, and there was a bill that had just been rejected: the Right to Contraception Act. Contraception is protected by a Supreme Court ruling, it’s not protected by law, and the intention of the proposed law was to enshrine protection so that a Supreme Court case couldn’t overturn it, which was a fear post-Roe<\/em>.2<\/a><\/sup> I started to imagine this world where these plants were the only resources that people in my state had. And I wanted to acknowledge this long and complicated history of people searching for the possibility of deciding if, when, and how they had children, and to think about this moment where we have so many powerful tools that make that possible, but we have a politics in certain places that withholds those modern tools. And I wanted to create this project that brought many different people together around this issue.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> The project started with you photographing women and people with uteruses holding Queen Anne’s lace. As it progressed, you started incorporating other botanicals. You’re also now photographing allies, so it’s not just women. Would you talk about this expansion of the project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Angella and Evan Holding Dogfennel<\/em>, 2025. 12 x 15 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> As I researched Queen Anne’s lace\u2014which is readily available in Alabama\u2014I learned that there were all these other plants that had been used medicinally to induce abortion or as contraception. The potential to use those plants allowed me to pull from differing histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, I read Killing the Black Body <\/em>by Dorothy Roberts.4<\/a><\/sup> She discusses how enslaved women would use cotton root bark to prepare a tea to induce abortion. Cotton is a common plant in certain parts of Africa, so a lot of enslaved people came to the U.S. knowing how to prepare this recipe, and held that information pretty closely and didn’t share it with their captors or with white people. It was undertaken as a way for mothers to protect their children from being born into bondage; it was ultimately a compassionate way of resisting the enslavement of their children. I decided to expand and use these different botanicals because they gave a much broader view of how this history existed and how I might draw it into the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for allies and others appearing, I made a picture featuring the hands of my daughter along with mine, and thought it was really powerful. Many of the people I’ve photographed who have children have talked about wanting to protect access to reproductive care for them. I also thought it was important to include men, partners, providers, etc. to represent that this is not just a \u201cwomen’s issue\u201d or an issue that only pertains to reproductive bodies. Lots of people work together collaboratively\u2014sometimes at risk to their own livelihood, sometimes going against the law\u2014to provide this type of access. I thought this was a way I could be more inclusive in terms of what it really takes and what it really means to have reproductive autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Sarah and Milo Holding Queen Anne\u2019s Lace<\/em>, 2024. 12 x 15 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> You always do such a deep dive into research in your projects. You mentioned Killing the Black Body<\/em>\u2014are there other texts you have found particularly useful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> A text that has really changed the way I think about how culture influences abortion is John Riddle\u2019s Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West<\/em>.5<\/a><\/sup> It looks at the ways different cultures historically have used herbal, medicinal treatments, in terms of contraception, abortion, and the general health of women and people with uteruses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another is Londa Schiebinger\u2019s Plants and Empire<\/em>.6<\/a><\/sup> It\u2019s about colonial bioprospecting and looks at a particular plant in the Caribbean that was used to induce abortion\u2014the peacock flower. There are records of European bioprospectors finding and recording this knowledge, but the peacock flower was never exported. Schiebinger discusses the role of gender in the decision-making of what is valuable economically and socially, and the way these bioprospectors ignored this knowledge because it was coming from enslaved and Indigenous people, and because it was directed towards women, not necessarily towards the sort of capitalist ends that men tended to think are more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> Can we talk about where you source the plants that appear in Holding Together<\/em>? I know you have a kind of reproductive care garden going. Is that where you’re getting most of the plants now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> Yeah, I have multiple places that I get things from, and I do have a reproductive garden. When I decided to expand this work, I started ordering seeds and plants, and they’re quite beautiful, and no one’s allowed to touch that part of my yard but me! But I also forage. One example is dogfennel. The photograph you and I made together contains dogfennel, which is a weed that just popped up in my yard. I was curious, and researching it led me to a website that details over one hundred and fifty types of plants that were used by Indigenous North Americans to induce abortion or for contraception.7<\/a><\/sup> I’ve also photographed cotton, and I’ve gotten that from a local farmer who has very generously allowed me to pick from their fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Betsy Holding Dogfennel<\/em>, 2025. 12 x 15 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes selecting plants happens with intentionality for me; other times there’s just this way the landscape has opened up into a set of possibilities for learning about the world that I could never have anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> How many plants have you used in the project at this point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> Twelve or thirteen. Using plants as art materials\u2014you have to be patient. A lot of the plants I want to photograph bloom biennially, so I have to wait two years before I can harvest them. There are some plants that I\u2019m still waiting on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve also been thinking about integrating the question of IVF into the work, because there are medicinal plants that have historically been used to try to promote fertility. And there are also plants that are used to help balance hormone fluctuations during perimenopause and menopause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> Many possibilities! You have countless images for this series, and we’ve talked about how the project has expanded, and may continue to expand. I\u2019m also interested to hear how you define Holding Together\u2019s <\/em>parameters and what would have to happen for you to consider it complete?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> This project, to me, is very timely, so I feel it\u2019s important to put it out in the world before I know what its full parameters are. It’s really been a project that has been expanding for me since that first conversation about Queen Anne’s lace. One of the things that’s been really rewarding\u2014and difficult, too\u2014is that a lot of times when I photograph people, they’ll share intimate stories with me about their lived experiences of reproductive care. This has been such an amazing opportunity to listen and learn. I’ve thought about possibly integrating some of those stories into the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s also an international component to reproductive health. It’s not just Americans that deserve access to this treatment and care, and so I’ve been curious about going abroad and trying to look at these larger stories and figure out how they might bring broader perspectives to the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If legislation nationally codified abortion access into law, that would change the meaning of the work substantially. I don’t know if that would be the completion of the work, but it’s something I think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> The intimate stories that people share\u2014is that something you ask about or do you let your sitter take the lead on whether they want to share?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> This relates to how I take the pictures. Initially, I was photographing people I know, then I broadened out to other people. Even the people I know really well, we had never talked about this topic. But when you know you’re there to make art about reproductive issues, it can be a door that swings wide open in terms of sharing and saying: This is why I want to be a part of this project; this is what I want to do. So, this sharing happens with strangers, and with close friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sometimes photograph at conferences and events; I take my camera and my plants on the road. People that I could never have expected wander into the project. I’ve also thrown parties where we gather and take these pictures, and sometimes conversations develop on the margins of me taking the photographs. As I finish, I’m able to join the ongoing conversation. This is one of the hopes I have for the work\u2014that it might powerfully allow people to have these conversations inside of art galleries, because it has this way of bringing the topic to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> You mention these works being in galleries\u2014what is your goal for exhibiting or publishing these works and bringing them to audiences?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> It\u2019s truly a collaborative project; I\u2019m making it with others. The images themselves contain so much of the photographed person. Their gestures, way of being, creativity. In sharing the work, I think it’s important for multiple photographs to be on the wall, and a gallery or museum is a great space. I have gained so much from work that I see in galleries and museums that I carry out into the world and see differently. So, I always imagine my work there. But I also think I could do an installation on the street, or in a public space in a way that might be surprising, engaging with people who don’t visit museums and galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also want to find a way to further engagement beyond the gallery walls and the experience of the work itself. The U.S. mail has been such an important part of the way abortion access has been maintained in places where there are bans, because providers, at great risk to themselves, mail abortion pills to people via telehealth. I’ve wanted to acknowledge that, so I’ve been thinking about creating either a postcard book or placing postcards in the installation in some way where people could take them back out into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> This reminds me of Anthony Comstock’s nineteenth-century laws against obscene materials being sent through the mail, with anything to do with reproductive care labeled \u201cobscene.\u201d Thinking about mail art and how those fighting for reproductive justice have had to deal with these kinds of legal repressions for such a long time\u2014that would be a very interesting continuation of this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned the personalities of the sitters coming out in the images, and when you look at them together, you see people’s jewelry, tattoos, nail polish, and the way they hold their hands. So, why black and white? Especially since color has been such an important part of your other major projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allison Grant, Sydney Holding Cotton<\/em>, 2025. 12 x 15 in. Photograph provided by the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> I wanted the work to be in conversation with the history of recording and sharing information about botanicals. Historically, there are so many examples of people collecting plant samples and flattening them out and pressing them into books. Often, they are really splayed out so that you can see all the intricacies and details of the leaves. And botanical illustration is a little bit more three-dimensional but is still quite flat and really isolates the plant. I wanted my photographs to look a little bit like drawings or pressed plants, to reference the way that knowledge about these specimens has historically been passed through books and two-dimensional representations. In color, the photographs felt too dimensional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also didn\u2019t want to be tethered to a lighting studio. The black and white still lets the personality of the people come out, but it also lets me travel with my camera and not be in a controlled environment. If the lighting is different, I can adjust the images and have a high degree of consistency\u2014I think of this project a little bit like a typology\u2014that I think is lost when the color shifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESH:<\/strong> I see this series as a natural extension of your earlier project Within the Bittersweet<\/a><\/em>, which includes images of various landscapes and vegetation of Tuscaloosa, and often features you and your children. As you put it in your artist statement, it\u2019s \u201ca dark pastoral narrative about raising my children amid concerns about the impacts of climate change and environmental contamination.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup> There seems to be a kind of ecofeminism to this series, and I\u2019m thinking here especially of images like the one where you stand in this lush, green setting, gazing down at your young daughter as she nurses. Would you speak a bit on the connections between feminism, motherhood\/parenthood, and environmental concerns?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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