‘Inherited Bodies’ is a semi-retrospective exhibition by artist Carli Adby, with photographic, archival, and experimental works exploring how women’s health — and the language that surrounds it — is experienced, represented, and inherited.

Grounded in lived experiences of PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), POI (Premature Ovarian Insufficiency), Menopause and severe PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) - ‘Inherited Bodies’ questions who determines and defines what is “normal” or “dysfunctional”.

Adby’s collection of projects are both personal and collective. Weaving together women’s stories, ‘Inherited Bodies’ examines how societal and political narratives impact the relationships we have with ourselves and others. It explores the absence of choice in what we bear; biologically and culturally. It questions the extent of biological inheritance and its potential for change.

‘Inherited Bodies’ brings personal artefacts, research and present-day experiences to trace a history of women reduced to wombs and symptoms. Maternal identity, ageing, fertility and health are held side-by-side with what it means to truly live as a mother, a daughter and as a woman.

'Inherited Bodies' opens space for complexity, asking how gender, diagnosis, and language shape care, identity, and belonging. It is not about the ‘broken’, but about a sense of self and autonomy for our body and health - reclaimed through dialogue, creativity and connection.