Ten years ago, in June 2016, I began painting with my menstrual blood.
This piece is called Flor de Vida (June 2016), that depicted my flourishing from the slumbers of my own wounding back into life.
I was 24-years old back then and there was obviously no plan.
No audience waiting on the other side (well... except my mother who took years before accepting that I did this).
There was only my body, my pain, my curiosity, and an undeniable knowing after a plant medicine ceremony that my blood was not something to hide.
I then started timidly sharing my art online... encouraged by some friends that were really excited by it and saw it's validity.
Very slowly, resonance began to build. But so did doubt, misunderstanding, shame and backlash.
Menstrual art lived almost entirely in the shadows and for a long time I felt misunderstood, dismissed and sensationalized. But I continued, because the transformation I was feeling in my bones, my womb, my body was oh, so real.
It began as a personal ritual, helping me understand my period and my own biology in ways I never had before.
It became a doorway into the womb mysteries, a way to make sense of my womanhood... and more than that, to finally feel safe in my body, to find my place in the world.
Through this practice, I learned to listen to my womb, learned the life style choices I needed to apply to heal from endometriosis, PCOS, period pains, and hormonal imbalance, to reclaim my cycle from shame and pathology.
I also found a deep rooted spiritual practice in it.
What emerged was not just art, but also a very sophisticated language, spoken by the body itself.
Since then my work has traveled through social media, television, magazines, radio stations, podcasts. I've held collective menstrual art retreat, where sixteen women came together to paint with their blood.
Every day, messages arrive in my DMs from women who've begun this practice and found it life-changing. The menstrual art movement is on fire. It's spreading and it's real.
And that gives validity to this work in ways honestly nothing else could.
And now this past week, that language entered a university space.
As part of an exhibition on reproductive health at King's College London, my menstrual artworks were displayed, engaged with and held in a public academic setting.
The exhibition was called “Every Body Knows” and was part of the KCL Winter Festival on Empowerment (held at Somerset House). Hundreds of people spent time with the work. They were reading, reflecting, speaking with one another about it. A partner charity leader stood in the space and was visibly moved.
Conversations unfolded where silence and whispers still linger. And perhaps most significantly, this work was witnessed by students, young people at the threshold of understanding their bodies, teenagers who need this vital information now, when they are most porous to it. These are the years when shame takes root or when empowerment begins. To offer these codes, this language of the body, precisely when it's needed mos... that feels like the work finding its true purpose.
And what I feel most strongly about all this is that this is the real beginning.
Menstrual art was never meant to be provocative, sensational, rage bait or clout.
It is remembrance, education, embodiment through blood and visceral rawness.
It is a way back into the body at a time when women's health remains deeply under-researched, misunderstood and dismissed.
Seeing this work held inside a university means the conversation is finally catching up.
Ten years ago, I remember I was bleeding and creating my art in solitude. Today, this same blood speaks in official halls of learning. And tomorrow... I know it will speak in places we cannot yet imagine.
Menstrual art does not belong to me alone.
It belongs to every woman who has been taught to override her body, every girl who learned to fear her bleed, every womb that carries memory beyond words.
If this work can live in a university today, it can live anywhere tomorrow. I'm dreaming museums, medical spaces, classrooms, ritual spaces.
Ten years in, and I don't feel far from finished. I feel devoted, steady and at the edge of something much larger than myself.
My art was always about changing how we see and related to the body.
And I will continue this work until it is recognized as a consolidated therapeutic method in this world, acknowledged by institutions and finally backed by science.
There is much to celebrate, but we are still at the beginning.
If you want to share your menstrual art and be part of the movement, join us here: https://sacredwoman.com/pages/menstrual-art-movement
Thank you for believing in this work, which is simply an extension of a deeper longing of the feminine.
My voice is our voice.
Love always,
Jasmine x