Birth Mandala

---

Artist: Lesley Turner

Title: Birth Mandala

Attribution: Birth Mandala, 2022, Lesley Turner

Year: 2022

Materials: Vintage wool blankets, worn garments, cotton bedsheet

Dimensions: 36" x 36"

Image Statement: We are all connected by our birth experience. We all have mothers who share the life-giving birth experience. Yet in all our modern-day creative expressions birth is rarely celebrated as the source of our continued existence. In prehistory societies, symbols served to celebrate the arrival of new life. Since then, largely because of the dominance of patriarchal societies the universal experience of birth has been repressed, medicalized, and removed from mothers’ control. There needs to be a shift in the way we view the birth process. The doctor doesn’t ‘deliver’ the new life as if emptying a vessel carrying an object. It is the mother who gives life to a new human. She gives birth. As we move towards a more egalitarian and compassionate societal view women can reclaim their empowering birthing experiences for the betterment of their children and society’s well-being.