Installation, 2022
featuring soundscape in collaboration with Jessica Fuquay

Full Circle is a participatory installation inviting birth workers to share their stories as they weave a collective wreath using plants associated with fertility. Commissioned by WHAMglobal‘s Birthing A Movement initiative, the project took place in Pittsburgh, where Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy than their peers in 97% of other U.S. cities.

Throughout the exhibition, the artist led talking circles and interviewed local birth workers, including doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, and labor and delivery nurses. Participants included birth workers from Elephant Song, the city’s first Black-owned freestanding doula practice, and the Midwife Center, the nation’s largest freestanding birth center, where the artist herself gave birth. Their audio testimonies are added to a soundscape incorporating recordings of the artist’s newborn son.

Full Circle debuted as part of Anthropology of Motherhood‘s seventh exhibition at the 2022 Three Rivers Arts Festival.