I like art as much as the next person. In fact, one of my favorite non-English courses in college was, rather surprisingly, an art history course that I only took because I could schedule it with a friend (a notable downside was Duchamp’s Fountain, which is in fact kind of relevant here). However, there’s a new trend in art—using menstrual fluid to create, um, paintings. And yes, I’m serious.

Painter/photographer Lani Beloso suffers from a condition called menorrhagia, which results in her having an exceptionally heavy and painful period. That sucks for her, seriously. However, I’m not sure I’m thrilled about the direction she took to, uh, go with the flow.

From Eden Fantasys:

“One day,” [Beloso] says, “I thought: I’m gonna sit over something and I’m going to see exactly how much comes out of me—because I thought it was a gallon. I thought I was bleeding to death every month. I wanted to actually see the amount…I’m just going to sit over great a canvas and make a painting out of it while I’m at it.”

That was the beginning of “The Period Piece,” a project in which Beloso, already a painter/photographer, created 13 canvases with her own menstrual blood, representing a year’s worth of cycles. She wasn’t making a statement—she was just wanted to make the pain worth something.

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