This tiny, powerful painting depicts an operating room with surgeons performing a cesarean section. The artist records a moment both commonplace and extraordinary, intimate and sterile, on the threshold of life inside the womb and outside of it. This work portrays an everyday occurrence—99% of births in the United States happen in hospitals. While over 30% of live births are cesarean deliveries, they are often considered taboo and rarely depicted in painting. Displaying this work here removes this arbitrary boundary and lets us view an act that can sometimes be experienced as caring while at other times traumatic.

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