Mother Vérité

Client

Frida (maternal care brand, founded by Chelsea Hirschhorn

Artist

Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark

Subject

London's first public statue of a postpartum woman

Subsequent locations

Portman Square, London; Art Basel Miami

Sector

Art Foundry

Services

Background

In a country where fewer than 4% of public statues depict women, and where the postpartum body has rarely if ever been represented in public art, Mother Vérité is a significant work. Created by British digital sculptor Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark and commissioned by Frida, the maternal care brand, it stands seven feet tall in silicon bronze, the material of monuments and permanence, depicting a woman cradling her newborn in the raw physical reality of the hours and days after birth.

D'Clark interviewed and scanned a diverse group of 40 postpartum women to create the sculpture, capturing the physical and emotional truths of early motherhood with a fidelity that no previous public artwork had attempted. The result is a figure with visible stretch marks, engorged breasts, a linea negra, and the disposable underwear of a hospital ward: not the idealised body of classical sculpture, but the real one.

The Commission

Frida, the maternal care brand known for confronting taboos around postpartum health, commissioned artist Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark to create the first public statue of a postpartum woman. The work had to be in bronze, the material that puts figures on pedestals and places them in history, and it had to be technically beyond reproach: a sculpture of this significance needed to last.

D'Clark's process combined 3D scanning, digital sculpting, and live reference to produce a form of extraordinary surface detail. The challenge then passed to us: to realise that form in silicon bronze without losing any of the detail that gave it meaning.

The Technical Challenge

What we can note from the public record is that D'Clark's digital sculpting software struggled with some of the fine physiological detail the work demanded: the software's rendering limitations meant that certain features required manual resolution. The casting process needed to preserve everything the sculptor had fought to include.

The Result

Mother Vérité was unveiled on the steps of the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington: the spot most associated in the public mind with the polished presentation of royal births, and therefore a deliberate, pointed choice for a sculpture about the reality of postpartum life that rarely appears in those photographs.

From there it moved to Portman Square in central London, then to Art Basel Miami, before going on long-term loan to a major institution dedicated to women's health. A sculpture made in Kent now occupies a permanent place in the cultural conversation about how women's bodies and experiences are represented in public space.