Birthing in Alabama: Designing Spaces for Reproduction delves into the history of birth in Alabama as a means of understanding the various systems that affect doctors, nurses, midwives, and birth workers’ ability to provide access to safe and affordable reproductive healthcare. The installation centers on the efforts of obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Yashica Robinson, whose practices—Alabama Women’s Wellness Center (AWWC) and the Alabama Birth Center (ABC)—fuel a new expanded network of home healthcare services and alternatives to hospital births. This work reveals ongoing inequities in the state—resulting from economics, racial injustice, public policy, and distance from healthcare facilities. The fragment is draped with a representations of Alabama native plants that have been used medicinally for millennia by Indigenous, African, and European populations to support pregnancy, birthing, and general health care. Alabama artist Micah Althea Briggs illustrated twenty two of these plants, a selection of which will grow on the wall installed at the Center.

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Paintings