"Menstrual Accessory": A Performance by Vanessa Dion Fletcher

What if menstruation was trendy, fashionable, desirable? “Menstrual Accessory” comes in a 1 oz. bottle and can be applied to your white pants to cover your period stains with much prettier pink stains.

For the best over-all look, be sure to match your stain color with your shoes and your lips.

Vanessa Dion Fletcher’s” Menstrual Accessory” performance takes the form of a live “infomercial” extolling the virtues of the product that turns period stains into glamorous designs.

The performance concludes with a hands-on activity wherein audience members may make designs on pre-“stained” underwear.

Dion Fletcher employs porcupine quills, wampum belts, and menstrual blood to reveal the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally.

She links these ideas to personal experiences with language, fluency, and understanding.

All of these themes are brought together in the context of her Potawatomi and Lenape ancestry, and her learning disability caused by a lack of short-term memory.

Her work is held in the Indigenous Art Center Collection in Gatineau, Quebec, and Seneca College.