Thematic Areas of the Platform
Why this section
Because where words fall short, art allows us to access dimensions of experience that go beyond what can be narrated. And in the context of obstetric violence, offering an artistic space is not an add-on; it is an ethical necessity.
This section exists to hold that gaze.
To make room for what hurts.
To open a path for bodily memory.
Here, art acts as a witness, as a symbolic language, and as a bridge between the personal and the collective. In that gesture, it opens the possibility of repair.
Each piece offers a singular perspective and, at the same time, becomes part of a shared narrative: one of recognizing, listening, and transforming.
Renée Hoffman’s Cesarean Quilt
A Textile Narrative of Childbirth Experience in MAMA:
Motherhood Around the Globe (International Museum of Women)
Renée Hoffman shares a video documenting the making of her artwork Cesarean Quilt, created in response to her first birth, which ended in an unplanned cesarean section after an induction and 36 hours of labor. In her account, the clinical outcome (“mother and baby are healthy”) coexisted with difficult emotions that she describes as hard to express in the postpartum context, including feeling that the emotional impact of the experience was not recognized.
Krissima Poba
TArt, Science and Breastfeeding:
A Critical Satire of the Infant Formula Industry
We share the audiovisual work in which artist and scientific mediator Krissima Poba presents her installation MAM! (Mamelles humaines), a project situated at the intersection of contemporary art, public health, and critical thinking.
Her proposal is not merely aesthetic. It is an exercise in scientific mediation that uses the codes of advertising in order to deconstruct them from within.
Inviting Contributions
If you are an artist and this space resonates with you, we invite you to share your work—video, image, sound or performance—as a way to bear witness and open new paths of understanding.
Your piece does not have to “explain” obstetric violence; it can simply emerge from the body, from memory, from care.
Each contribution will help broaden this collective archive of voices, gestures and emotions that seek recognition, dignity and repair.
Project IPOV RESPECTFULCARE has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2022-Staff Exchange programme. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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