Birthing in Alabama: Design and Redesign of Reproduction

Exhibition Design

client: Lori Brown, FAIA and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

graphic design: Kelly Sung

Jessie worked with architect Lori Brown, FAIA to develop this exhibition for the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, opening November 2024.

Birthing in Alabama: Designing Spaces for Reproduction delves into the history of birth in Alabama as a means of understanding the various systems that affect doctors, nurses, midwives, and birth workers’ ability to provide access to safe and affordable reproductive healthcare. The installation centers on the efforts of obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Yashica Robinson, whose practices—Alabama Women’s Wellness Center (AWWC) and the Alabama Birth Center (ABC)—fuel a new expanded network of home healthcare services and alternatives to hospital births. This work reveals ongoing inequities in the state—resulting from economics, racial injustice, public policy, and distance from healthcare facilities.

In partnership with Dr. Robinson and colleagues, architect Lori A. Brown and a team of architectural researchers have mapped the legacy of laws, building, and zoning codes to contextualize these challenges and present designed alternatives to alleviate their impact. Central to the installation is a wall fragment originally commissioned to create a secure environment for Dr. Robinson’s reproductive health clinic which closed in 2022 when abortions became illegal in the state. Brown and her team have worked with the birthworking community to adapt their design for Dr. Robinson’s ABC, wrapping the facility’s grounds with a green wall that creates private space for laboring, shaded areas for friends, family, and staff, and outdoor play areas for children. The fragment is draped with representations of Alabama native plants that have been used medicinally for millennia by Indigenous, African, and European populations to support pregnancy, birthing, and general health care. Alabama artist Micah Althea Briggs illustrated twenty two of these plants, a selection of which will grow on the wall installed at the Center. Interviews of health-care providers, community partners, and leaders of maternity-care organizations, project in this space, providing insight into [DS1] the many challenges faced while providing birthing care in Alabama.

Exhibition design by Jessie Marks Rubenstein. Botanical illustrations by Micah Althea Briggs (patient of Dr. Skanes). Research by Kelsey Benitez; Lauren Ragland, Jenny Linxi Zhang, Alana Fantauzzi, Maya Angela Simms, and Hawa Omar.

Interviews with Dr. Yashica Robinson, Katrina Dial; Certified Nurse Midwife, AWWC and ABC; Dr. Heather Skanes, Oasis Family Birthing Center; Dr. Stephanie Mitchell, Certified Professional Midwife, Birth Sanctuary; Emily Hagood, International Cesarean Network Huntsville; Jessica Thompson, nurse, Safer Birth in Bama; Asia Scott, doula; Noel Leithart, Certified Professional Midwife, Chair of Alabama State Board of Midwifery

Objects and images courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History; Birmingham, Alabama Public Library Archives; National Archives and Records Administration; National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health; National Institutes of Health; National Medical Association; American College of Nurse-Midwives; UAB Archives, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Shutterstock; photographers Leilani Rogers, Justin Torres, and Bethany Mollenkamp; and Malcolm Griggs, Griggs Design.

With special thanks to Dalton Johnson; Whitney Lee White, ACLU staff attorney, Reproductive Freedom Project; Sharon Holley, Nurse Midwife, Master's Nurse Midwifery Pathway Director, University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Nursing.

This installation was made possible with additional support from Syracuse University Office of Academic Affairs; Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement and School of Architecture; Independent Projects, a grant partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts and the Architectural League of New York; and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State legislature.

LET'S WORK TOGETHER.

Say hello: jessie@marksandspaces.com