Nursing through contagion

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Nursing through this ghostly ring of calm draws from feminist science studies to challenge the presumed boundaries between maternal labor, scientific inquiry, and microbial life. The work centers on a scan of a glass petri dish containing my breast milk pooled on a sterile filter disc, nested on an agar medium made from algae-based gelatin. The agar is colonized by fungi and bacteria swabbed from my idle studio and lab—spaces left unattended as I paused my research to raise my child. This interlude, rich in care yet marked by institutional invisibility, manifests as a microbial tableau: the antibody-rich milk carves out a clear space among the microbes, a “zone of inhibition.” This visual metaphor resists the sterilized, masculinist narratives of productivity and objectivity, highlighting instead a relational epistemology where bodily fluids, maternal time, and microbial others co-produce knowledge.