BIRTHING IN ALABAMA: DESIGNING SPACES FOR REPRODUCTION
ABOUT THE INSTALLATION
LORI A. BROWN
BORN 1969, ATLANTA, GEORGIA; ACTIVE SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
TRISH CAFFERKY
BORN 1993, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND; ACTIVE BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
DR. YASHICA ROBINSON
BORN 1976, NOTASULGA, ALABAMA; ACTIVE HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA
Birthing in Alabama: Designing Spaces for Reproduction delves into a history of birth in Alabama to better 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 and the Alabama Birth Center (ABC)—fuel a new and 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. In partnership with Dr. Robinson and colleagues, architect Lori A. Brown and a team of architectural researchers have mapped the legacy of laws, building, and zoning codes to contextualize these challenges and present designed alternatives to alleviate their impact.
Central to the installation is a wall fragment originally commissioned to create a secure environment for Dr. Robinson’s reproductive health clinic which closed in 2022 when abortions became illegal in the state. Brown and her team have collaborated with the birth-working community to adapt their design for Dr. Robinson’s new birth center, wrapping the facility’s grounds with a green wall that creates private space for laboring, shaded areas for friends, family, and staff, and outdoor play areas for children. The fragment is draped with representations of Alabama native plants that have been used medicinally for millennia by Indigenous, African, and European populations to support pregnancy, birthing, and general healthcare. Artist Micah Althea Briggs illustrated twenty-one of these plants, a selection of which will grow on the wall at ABC. Interviews with healthcare providers, community partners, and leaders of maternity-care organizations are projected in this space to provide insight into the experience of providing birthing care in Alabama.
Visual Description
Birthing in Alabama: Designing Spaces for Reproduction is an installation that contains a lot of text information on the gallery walls, including timelines and a variety of graphics. Situating ourselves by the entrance after we enter from the tobacco leaf filled installation at the end of the long central hallway on the 2nd floor, the wall to our left is painted a burgundy color with white molding above. On this wall, small botanical ink drawings on white paper are framed and are installed in three rows of five drawings each. There is another set of six drawings on the same wall on the other side of a fireplace that has a large arched mirror above the mantle with ornate decorative carvings painted all white. A total of twenty-one botanical illustrations of native Alabama plants show a vast variety of plant morphology, or characteristics. The simplicity of the stippled shading and high contrast of each drawing clearly shows the structures of each plant with vein patterns, textured stems, the ridges of leaves or blooming flowers.
From the same entrance, on the off-white wall to our right we see information above another carved white molding. Above the text and graphics the wall begins with a large 2024 quote by Dr. Stephanie Mitchell, Certified Professional Midwife, that reads, “The problem is when you start trying to treat the process of human labor and birth as if it’s a high-risk situation every time—you’re going to run into high-risk outcomes. That’s what you’re going to get.” Underneath, information headers include “2024 Birthing Access in Alabama, Oasis Family Birthing Center Et Al. V. Alabama Department of Public Health,” and “Spatial Design of Birthing Spaces.”
In the center of the gallery is a sculptural installation with a bench on one side. Facing the fireplace and mirror, there is a bench made of gray wood horizontal planks. The side of the bench where one rests their back is very tall and has open areas showing vibrant yellow-green hoses inside the structure twisting and turning. The hoses connect to the other side of the structure which is a solid wall of the horizontal gray planks that is scattered with many silver metal knobs. Below the wall of knobs is a platform low to the ground filled with bright chartreuse yellow-green paper foliage. Above the structure, hanging from the ceiling is more of the same foliage suspended like a chandelier with a mix of leaves spilling down.
In front of the structure and across from the wall with drawings and the fireplace, another burgundy wall has been split in the middle to hold a display of objects behind glass. There are a variety of objects, such as four glass jars filled with herbs, a book propped open to an article titled “Nurse Midwife: Maude Callen Eases Pain of Birth, Life, and Death” with a black-and-white image of a Black nurse watching over a sleeping Black woman. There is another small image printed in blue of a midwife caring for a baby titled “The Alabama Midwife” by another open book with a list of everything that the midwife’s bag should contain. There are essential objects such as a small green vintage tin of silver nitrate solution and a simple white short sleeve midwife uniform dress. There are images and quotes above the objects featuring Black midwives. One image shows the midwives outside standing in a row shoulder to shoulder, with the quote by Onnie Lee Logan, “They were prejudiced. They didn’t pay us too much attention…. If you were Black period they didn’t care too much about you.”
The burgundy walls on each side of the glass display case feature a timeline, starting with 1865 on the left and 1960 on the right. Each side has a large quote on top of a row of black and white photographs and text. The 1865 side begins with a quote by Julia C Lathrop, Director of the United States Children’s Bureau from 1912-1921: “The attention of a poor physician is more dangerous than that of a good midwife.” Photographs show a mobile clinic, Black midwives caring for Black women in labor, and a map of Alabama showing racial disparities in maternal deaths in 1957. The other side, which starts with 1960, has a quote by nurse midwife Sharon Holley, “Health Policy can make or take away rights. And who is deciding this policy?” Some of the photographs underneath include portraits of Black women and a midwife holding a phone wearing a shirt that says “Dope Black Midwife” while a mother is handed her newborn child.
The final wall, across from where we started and by another entrance leading to the installation Unruly Subjects, leaves us with a 2024 quote from the OB-GYN, Dr. Yashica Robinson: “We want to make sure that people in our community are able to have the birth that they desire and deserve. Our patients have had to leave the area. You have people leaving Alabama, crossing state lines going to Tennessee, or Georgia to be able to have the birth experience they deserve. You should be able to get the healthcare that you want in your own community.”
Acknowledgements
Exhibition design by Jessie Marks Rubenstein. Wall fabrication by 42 design fab studio. Botanical illustrations by Micah Althea Briggs. Graphic design by Kelly Sung. Research by Kelsey Benitez, Lauren Ragland, Jenny Linxi Zhang, Alana Fantauzzi, Maya Angela Simms, and Hawa Omar.
Interviews with Dr. Yashica Robinson, Katrina Dial; Certified Nurse Midwife, Doctor of Nursing; Dr. Heather Skanes, Oasis Family Birthing Center; Dr. Stephanie Mitchell, Birth Sanctuary; Emily Hagood, International Cesarean Network Huntsville; Jessica Thompson, nurse, Safer Birth in Bama; Asia Scott, doula; and Noel Leithart, Certified Professional Midwife, Chair of Alabama State Board of Midwifery.
Objects and images courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History; Birmingham, Alabama Public Library Archives; National Archives and Records Administration; National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health; National Institutes of Health; National Medical Association; American College of Nurse-Midwives; UAB Archives, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Shutterstock; photographers Leilani Rogers, Justin Torres, and Bethany Mollenkamp; and Malcolm Griggs, Griggs Design.
Special thanks to Dalton Johnson; Whitney Lee White, ACLU staff attorney, Reproductive Freedom Project; and Sharon Holley, Nurse Midwife, Master’s Nurse Midwifery Pathway Director, University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Nursing.
This installation is made possible with additional support from Syracuse University Office of Academic Affairs; Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement and School of Architecture; Independent Projects, a grant partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts and the Architectural League of New York; and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
