Rebecca Ackroyd at Kestner Gesellschaft

In Hanover, a nightmarish re-staging of Victorian femininity casts reproductive technologies as tools of control as much as of emancipation.

A “period drama” refers to a genre of film or television production that sets its stories in recreated historical eras, defined by these past moments’ most characteristic aesthetics. As the title of Rebecca Ackroyd’s exhibition, it also alludes to the hormonal processes involved in reproductive cycles and the emotional turmoil that these can unleash. Its dual meaning orients the viewer through the artist’s use of technological gadgetry to undercut the biological and social structures that have long constrained the female body from without and within.