Shrine To Motherhood: Art Show and Fundraiser
This Mother's Day weekend, conceptual artist Haywood Watkins III invites the public to a one-night-only art show and fundraiser. Shrine To Motherhood, realized in collaboration with
Secret Flowers, transforms one of the most familiar symbols of maternal celebration, flowers, into an installation that is both beautiful and haunting.
Each year in the United States, Black women die from pregnancy-related complications at a rate three times higher than that of white women, an estimated 250+ deaths. These deaths are not anomalies. They are outcomes that are avoidable yet quietly overlooked by society. Shrine To Motherhood refuses that quiet.
The installation is composed of more than 1,000 flowers wrapped as Mother's Day bouquets. The bouquets rest together as a makeshift memorial, repurposing a gesture of love into an act of mourning. In placing the iconography of celebration inside the architecture of grief, the work asks its audience: can motherhood truly be honored, while Black motherhood is so needlessly vulnerable?
Watkins spoke to the thinking behind the work: "When I learned about the mortality rate of Black women during childbirth, I felt like I had to do something. I kept coming back to flowers. They show up when we celebrate our mothers and when we mourn them. That felt like the right place to start, the right symbol to bridge those two moments. By presenting Mother's Day bouquets as a makeshift memorial, the arrangements become an image of sudden loss. But the true impact of the installation is the realization that these losses aren't sudden. They’re anticipated and accepted."
Shrine To Motherhood will be on view for one night at 7 E Cary St, Richmond, VA 23219 on May 8, 2026, from 6 to 9 PM. Donations will be accepted at the event in support of Virginia Union University's Doula Certification Program, the first of its kind at an HBCU in Virginia. The program trains culturally competent doulas to provide equitable care to Black families across the Commonwealth, working directly to change the statistics that inspired this work.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3572518-0
