The inaugural exhibition of The Queer Birth Project, a collaborative arts and research-based project that promotes a radically inclusive view of pregnancy, birth, and family building, recently opened at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas.
In 1981, feminist artist Judy Chicago posed the question: How do women feel about all aspects of birth? In the resulting Birth Project, Chicago conducted an original survey and then collaborated with needleworkers to create a series of artwork that celebrated “the birth-giving capacity of women along with their creative spirit.” Her work was pathbreaking in highlighting the importance of visibility and representation in feminist practice. Yet it also reproduced universalistic and heteronormative understandings of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood.
Forty years later, The Queer Birth Project revisits and expands upon this work by asking: How do queer people experience birth? Representations of motherhood and birth in western art and social science have long excluded the lives of lesbian women and gender nonconforming bodies. This project seeks to promote inclusion by sharing the birth experiences of queer (LGBTQ+) people in the United States.
