19th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest People
Mwana Pwo

Corpus delicti [dɪˈlɪktaɪ] Body Of Proof [Law] Proof of crime obtained from the victim's own body. Corpus delicti is a series of conceptual portraits that portrays the presence of potentially abortive objects used clandestinely. Each of these objects is found in a mundane framework that leads us to observe the paradox that is the context where the legislated prohibition itself is what leads to the individual search for dangerous and fatal abortion methods. Corpus Delicti intends to register objects popularly known as potentially abortive as well as a way of decriminalizing the idea of ​​abortion. The selection of these objects is the result of a word-of-mouth and internet research on at-home abortion methods in Luanda. The main idea here is that the objects in question only exist because of the prohibition and criminalization of abortion as stipulated by the Angolan Penal Code. Through the title of the work, Corpus Delicti proposes to problematize and think about the contradiction inherent in the project of criminalizing abortion, bringing an attempt to reappropriate and re-signify the legal term. In this sense, the woman's body is understood as the place where the act of abortion takes place, seen as a crime, and her condition as a criminal woman for trying to carry out this act, is changed to the position of victim of the Penal Code, for the same reason.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 11.2021
Date Uploaded: 11.2021
Photo Location: Luanda, Angola
Copyright: © Mwana Pwo