Signs of Life

Designers, curators, and entrepreneurs are scrambling to make sense of motherhood in a culture that’s often hostile to it.

- Lila Allen

At their most extravagant, the tendriled seed pods of the Nigella damascena flower resemble the curled necks of swans in a Tunnel of Love. Its fringed, quick-growing blooms have long appeared in English cottage gardens, and in southern Europe and North Africa, where the species grows wild. In the United States you can purchase a packet of its seeds—around 2,200 of them—for about $6.

Nigella damascena is what herbalists call an emmenagogue—a plant that, when ingested, prompts the human uterus to expel its lining, whether or not it’s ready to be expelled. And also: whether or not something is growing inside of it. The flower’s commonly used sobriquet “love-in-a-mist” is actually one of two. Some people call it “devil in the bush.”

This fall, it lends its name to an exhibition at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Opened in late October and running through December 20, Love in a Mist: The Politics of Fertility examines the relationships between fertility, legislation, and the built and natural environment. Malkit Shoshan, the show’s curator, specializes in the architecture and urban planning of zones that have recently emerged from conflict, or are still mired in its depths. While much of her work has focused on Israel/Palestine, she’s now turned her attention to the U.S., to states in the Deep South and Midwest where so-called heartbeat bills are gaining political traction and redefining the public’s access to abortion—indeed, their very understanding of it.