Pario (meaning, to birth) examines the enslaved body as a battleground, focusing on the everyday exercises in agency and resistance taken by Black American women. The work is a 3D modeled bouquet that gathers together three plants charged by dual histories of enslavement and self-determination: Mexican cotton, blackhaw berry, and sugar cane leaf. Responding to her own lived experiences, body knowledge, and ancestral inheritances, Carter works to confound and complicate specific sites of pain and difficulty, looking closely at the historic uses of each of these plants. Installed as a window vinyl for the CAFKA biennial, Pario also invites viewers to (virtually) touch and tinker with the bouquet through an online platform, offering up more detailed information about each plant’s use: https://pario.withane.design/