The Original Sin

While in Europe, I documented every depiction of Adam and Eve I stumbled upon. What began as a passive fascination slowly became a way to make sense of my growing disconnection from my home country—a feeling sharpened by the political climate of early 2025, when women’s rights were facing significant setbacks. In the United States, a new presidential administration was rapidly rolling back reproductive protections, narrowing the legal definition of sex, and dismantling federal DEI initiatives. Abortion access, LGBTQ+ protections, and even the FDA’s approval authority were being challenged, while the Supreme Court signaled an openness to unequal treatment under the law. Abroad, global organizations warned of stalled progress and rising backlash against women’s rights almost everywhere.

Against this backdrop, I found myself thinking constantly about how society ended up existing within the patriarchy in the first place—my mind returning again and again to the concept of the “Original Sin.” If man’s fall from grace can be traced back to the first woman, then women are forever framed as inherently tainted by a sin Eve never knowingly committed.

Being an ocean away intensified everything. I felt both scared of losing rights as a woman and strangely removed from the political turmoil shaping my country. At the same time, I was taking a trend forecasting class, and in an attempt to make sense of this internal tension, I began developing a forecast—using myth, symbolism, and my own research to translate this fear, distance, and questioning into something structured, expressive, and forward-looking.