Minami Ivory, How Do I Bury You If I Don't Have Your Body: Counted, Graded, Numbered (PORTRAIT 2023)

These portrait images are from a series “How Do I Bury You If I Don’t Have Your Body: Counted, Graded, Numbered” (2022 - ). This series intends to exhibit my personal journey from clinical, sterile IVF treatments and the initial pain this causes. In the IVF lab, embryos are counted, graded and numbered like samples. They’re stored frozen together in the cold, dark and quiet room like icy poles in the corner shop at night. During every embryo transfer cycle, the embryos were thawed and slid down the tube to be transferred to my uterus. This embryo will be the one. It ought to be. I told myself every time. The journey became so painful the aim of it became just to get to the end of it. Mindlessly and obsessively, I continued the embryo transfers, consuming them like sweet icy poles.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.