Laia Abril is participating in the Official Section of the PHotoESPAÑA 2026 photography festival with an unprecedented installation on endometriosis, which challenges historical biases in medicine and the dismissal of pain. This exhibition can be seen at the Romanticism Museum from 2 June to 13 September.
Endometriosis, a chronic inflammatory disease affecting around 190 million women and uterus-bearing people worldwide, causing severe pain, bleeding, infertility, abdominal distension and nausea, was first described in 1860. Despite its prevalence, it still remains under-researched. Historically, medicine has used the male body as the universal model, perpetuating a bias that has led to late diagnoses and widespread dismissal of pain: up to 83% of patients report being told their symptoms were normal, exaggerated, or psychological.
Marie Blanche Wittman, later known as “the queen of hysterics,” was first admitted to La Salpétrière Hospital in 1877 at the age of 18. She became one of the most famous patients of the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, mentor to Sigmund Freud and a specialist in hypnotic treatment of so-called hysteria, a disorder that was considered to be primarily female, producing diverse symptoms and a supposed “propensity to cause problems”. Historically, both hysteria and severe pelvic pain were treated with methods that seem shocking today: tampons soaked in opium or belladonna, applications of cocaine, ether or chloroform, leeches or extremely hot vaginal douches.
This new installation by Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986), winner of the National Photography Award 2023, presents the fragmented bodies of five people with endometriosis, depicting the dissociation necessary to survive. The images evoke obstetric violence and institutional neglect. As a direct heir of On Mass Hysteria, the installation traces the historical continuity between the pathologisation of female bodies and the persistent delegitimisation of pain, exposing how medicine has often functioned more as a mechanism of control than of care in the field of sexual and reproductive health.
Image Credits:
- Endometriosis, 2026. Photo: © Laia Abril
