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Meaning of Birth

Mother has to endure the pain of childbirth which most people cannot tolerate. Although C-section is a new technology to help lessen the pain, I do not think the pain can be moderated. The damage to the body is immeasurable especially for older mothers. For many mothers over 35, they must risk their lives to give a birth. However, for a mother, nothing can be happier than having a baby.

C-Section Sketches

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Inspiration

I was inspired by an empty tissue box in my apartment. I imagined the box as the woman body and the box hole as the torn belly.

I once watched a video from the Buzzfeed that men experience the labor pain of women. It was so difficult for women to give the birth to babies. Giving a birth is such a great experience that women can love their children more. However, when it is too difficult to have a normal labor and baby deliver, women choose the C section to avoid the pain and exhaust. We are so lucky that the technology now is well developed because in the medieval, people invented C section but the process was much more gruesome. The image below is the origin of C section in the medieval age. I am not sure whether the baby can survive but there is no way that the mother can be alive in the end.

Nowadays, the rate of C section is higher and higher. Why women suddenly all want to choose C section? Except for the advice of doctor, many women choose C section because they want to avoid the labor pain. However, C section can cause a huge damage to the body and the operation is also very dangerous. Besides, you may miss one of the most important experiences of being a mother.

https://www.birthinjuryguide.org/birth-injury/types/c-section-injuries/

There is a Chinese saying that, females are genetically weak but they can be strong when they become mothers. I am not a mother yet but according to all the mother stories I have heard of, being a mother is really tough. It is a common thing in China that, many women quit their jobs to be fully committed to their families especially children. Taking care of children is the nature of a mother so personally thinking, women care more about their children than men. Therefore, men have weaker bonds and less interactions with their children. In addition, husbands usually play the role in entertaining children and having fun with them. Wives are more responsible for taking care of and educating children. The reason is that husbands spend most time on working so they have less time to stay at home, and hence less time to accompany with children. However, on the contrary, housewives spend most time at home so they are the closest partners to their children.

As I have discovered, many Chinese husbands think the job of the housewife is easier than working outside. At least, my father thinks in this way. Their thought is the source why they think women are inferior than men but they do not see the truth that being a housewife is harder than working outside because they have never been a househusband. In the same way, a father cannot understand the pain of a mother. For example, as the video showed above, most men underestimate the difficulty of delivering a baby.

In order to make my purpose more obvious, I put the baby inside the box. I painted the box and baby with human skin texture but the hands are more plastic. Since in the C section, doctors wear gloves so I want the hands to look less human-like. I painted the hands with deep red which looks like blood because I want to depict the gory scene of the surgery.

I want the box and the baby to look realistic so I chose the human skin texture. I also exaggerated the bloody veins of the box skin because I want to show the pressure and pain of a mother although she has fall asleep during the C section. However, the aftermath is a huge damage to her health.

In the presentation, I chose the same deep red as the floor color and the same human skin color as the background so it feels like we are inside the mother’s abdomen: the blood floods in and we can see clearly the veins on the wall inside of the abdomen.

I used acrylic paint and gloss medium to paint my project. I repainted my project many times because I want my project to look more glossy. However, in the end, the paint was too thick so I changed my idea, and painted the project with grey. In order to make this project more striking, I decided to add lumens. I put a porcelain plate above the utility light and put the object above the plate so the object will not fall off from the light. I chose porcelain plate because when it covers the light, it looks like an egg, a metaphor of birth. With the lumen, the entire object becomes red and the hole really looks like the inside of a zygote egg.