Arc of Birth

I have never been pregnant or given birth. This series began from curiosity, not experience. What I know comes from growing up in a large family, from the joy I felt around newborns, and from my fascination with what happens to a body while it is making another body.

Cells develop inside another person and slowly become someone who can live alone. I watched footage of caesarean sections and vaginal births, looking directly at the moment those nine months end and a lifetime begins. A head comes out of a vagina. My body shivers every time I watch it. I am drawn to it, and it unsettles me.

I kept drawing the same thing: a naked woman with a big pregnant belly, again and again, from different angles and in different colors. I never drew faces, because it was about the body itself. I also drew vulvas, because I still do not understand how a human comes out of such a small hole.

Will it be me one day?