Before the Blood Preview
This is a community project developed and delivered in collaboration with Nisaba, a menstrual health charity committed to menstrual justice for migrants including refugees and people seeking asylum living in the UK.
The exhibition began with a call out. We invited participants with a history of migration to join us in workshops exploring how menstrual health shapes and is shaped by the border, religious and cultural values, traditional knowledges and modern medicine. We – participants and organisers alike – allowed ourselves to reflect on both traumatic and joyful memories associated with menstruation. When did we have our first period? Who was with us? What did we know? How did it change us? What remedies do we use for pain or fatigue? Who are our confidantes? What do we teach our children? What cultural wisdom can we reclaim in remembrance? For some, these workshops were a first. They had never talked about their period, especially their first, so openly. For others, it came naturally – like talking about breakfast or the weather.
Out of these conversations emerged stories of periods suffered in silence and solitude; wisdom passed down from mothers or snippets of information passed between cousins; menarche experienced in the company of only a stoic father on one extreme and the whole village on the other. Far from painting a unified picture, our respective stories illustrated the breadth of lived experiences from culture to culture, country to country.
Here are only a fragment of these stories. Four portraits and four letters.
🗓️ Tuesday 7th October
⏰ 7.30m - 9.30pm
📍 Vagina Museum
Organiser of Before the Blood Preview
This ticket grants access to Before the Blood Preview on Tuesday 7th October 2025
Donations do not give you a ticket to access the event. Give donations to support the work of this event organiser.
SSL Encrypted
100% Secure
£0
Total (includes all fees)
Have a promo code?
Vagina Museum275 Poyser Street, London, E2 9HD
FREE
London