Throughout her journey to motherhood, Jodie Turner-Smith has done things on her own terms. While pregnant, the Pop It Fidget I’m 2 Years Old 2Nd Birthday Koala Flower Shirt besides I will buy this British actor pushed maternity style into new territory, notoriously celebrating her growing belly in a silky crop top and slip skirt on The Graham Norton Show. “#HereIsThatBumpYou’veBeenAskingFor,” she hashtagged alongside a snap of the look on Instagram. She also opened up about the struggles she faced navigating pregnancy and bracing to welcome her first child with husband Joshua Jackson—during a pandemic no less. “Every stage of my pregnancy brought its own challenges and lessons,” she wrote in an essay for British Vogue’s September 2020 issue, recounting her nearly four-day labor. “Nobody really teaches you about what your body goes through to bring a child into the world until you’re actually doing it.” In chronicling the ups and downs, Turner-Smith has been leading a new era of women celebrating the beauty of their pregnant bodies. The physical manifestation of this spirit? The sculptural belly cast that Turner-Smith had made while she was just over eight months pregnant.You’d be forgiven if you weren’t already familiar with the term. Designed to immortalize the life-changing physical and emotional transformation of pregnancy, belly casts are 3D plaster molds of a mother-to-be’s growing bump or full torso, usually done a couple of weeks to a month before giving birth. The idea to do one was first floated to Turner-Smith by her friend Zeyna Sy, a creative and content producer that has worked with Marley Natural and Outdoor Voices, who was inspired as she witnessed Turner-Smith’s transition into motherhood. “As Jodie’s baby grew, I knew it must have been a very foreign feeling to have someone else govern her physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual evolution and expansion,” explains Sy. “Experiences during pregnancy vary, but one thing I heard a lot of women mention is how much they missed ‘the belly’ once they gave birth. I love the proportions of Jodie’s body and wanted to literally cast this trippy, transformative moment ‘in stone’—to pause it! I asked Jodie if she would be open to me testing the process and casting her belly and she said, ‘Yes, babe.’”Once Sy got the green light, she asked friend, production designer, and visual artist Briana Gonzales to help guide her through the body-casting process. “I wanted the piece we created to look like a fragmented classical sculpture,” explains Sy of her vision, “delicate, but sturdy. Ultimately, I wanted Jodie to marvel at herself in this particular form. I knew it would be a cool, physical memory to have once she gave birth. It was my gift to Jodie, her husband, and her daughter in years to come.”Belly-casting offerings are becoming more widely available by way of artists; specialized small businesses, such as British belly-casting studio Rock the Bump; and people giving birth support services, such as New York holistic birth doula Joyce Havinga-Droop of Birth Ambassador. A mother of three, Havinga-Droop first became acquainted with belly casting when her stepdaughter, who is an artist, proposed helping her make one while she was pregnant 12 years ago. “I loved the idea of eternalizing the magic of the moment,” explains Havinga-Droop. “Plus, it’s a beautiful, intimate ritual that you can do with other loved ones from your inner circle.” At Birth Ambassador, Havinga-Droop offers support for mothers, couples, or bigger groups in creating a belly cast together. The mold can be left in its natural, raw state or sanded down, painted, and embellished. “During the third trimester of pregnancy, it’s important to slow down and get more into a nesting mode,” she says. “Decorating and going all out on the belly is definitely one way of doing that.”An evocative keepsake of pregnancy, belly casts quite literally cement and commemorate a woman’s growing bump as an objet d’art. “A mother will have a memory of the moment that her belly was big and full of life,” says Havinga-Droop. “It slows her down [and allows her] to take a moment and be present for the miracle that’s growing.” Moreover, the act of bringing a belly cast to life is a sacred tribute to motherhood and the power of female community, one that feels especially poignant for all parties after the challenges of the past year and the current emphasis on starting anew.
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This week, Frieze makes its return to New York. Scuttled last year due to the Pop It Fidget I’m 2 Years Old 2Nd Birthday Koala Flower Shirt besides I will buy this coronavirus pandemic, the five-day event will be the city’s first in-person, single-venue art fair since the Armory Show last spring (and Frieze’s first showing since Frieze L.A. in February 2020).Much about Frieze New York will be familiar to regulars, from the wide-ranging group of participating galleries to the engaging program of discussions, screenings, and other activations planned; but perhaps more still will be slightly modified to suit our current moment. (For one thing, this year’s visitors will not commute to Randall’s Island.)So, what does a major art fair look like in 2021? Below, find everything you need to know about Frieze New York. This year, Frieze New York will take place at The Shed in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, running from May 5 through 9. As ever, the fair will bring together galleries from all over the world, if on a somewhat smaller scale: There will be approximately 60 exhibitors onsite at The Shed, compared to the 190 that typically turn up to Randall’s Island. (“The Shed was designed for flexibility, both in its architecture and its programming, which made it the best partner for this year,” Rebecca Ann Siegel, Frieze’s director of Americas and content has said.) Its popular “Frame” section, overseen this year by gallerists Olivia Barrett (of Chatêau Shatto in Los Angeles) and Sophie Mörner (of Company Gallery in New York), will also return; spotlighting emerging galleries established fewer than 10 years ago.Frieze Viewing Room, a rich program of virtual “collaborations, special projects and talks,” will run alongside the physical fair for those unable to attend in person.Representational justice will be a focus, with more than 50 galleries and institutions paying tribute to the Vision & Justice Project, an initiative established by Harvard professor Sarah Lewis “to expand visual literacy and explore the connection between race, citizenship, and image making.” Throughout the fair, gallerists will respond to the Vision & Justice Project’s mission—and to the prompt “How are the arts responsible for disrupting, complicating, or shifting narratives of visual representation in the public realm?”—through artworks, digital events, and more.For the Vision & Justice Project tribute, Massimo De Carlo will show Sanford Biggers’s Cipher. It belongs to Biggers’s ongoing Chimeras series, combining “various African and European masks, busts and figures that explore historical depictions of the body and their subsequent myths, narratives, perceptions and power.”Sanford Biggers, Cipher, 2019. Marmo di Kilkenny / Kilkenny marble, 74 × 23 × 20 cm.For those lucky enough to claim their tickets before they all sold out (one can join a waitlist here), COVID-19 safety will be a top priority at The Shed. Entry times are staggered by 15-minutes increments; visitors must submit either a recent negative COVID test or proof that they have been fully vaccinated for at least 14 days; and temperature checks and masks are required, including for children. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the total occupancy of the The Shed will be limited to about 850 through Frieze, including staff. Among the highlights of this year’s presentations: new paintings and sculptures by Dana Schutz, courtesy of David Zwirner; three works by the French artist Daniel Buren, courtesy of Lisson Gallery; important assemblages by Thornton Dial, courtesy of David Lewis; and new commissions from Carrie Mae Weems and Hank Willis Thomas for the Vision & Justice Project tribute. Additionally, “The Looking Glass”—a group show curated by Daniel Birnbaum, artistic director of Acute Art, and Emma Enderby, curator of The Shed—will foreground “augmented reality works” by Precious Okoyomon, Cao Fei, and Kaws. Both onsite and off, Frieze has inspired all kinds of intriguing programming. MatchesFashion.com, for instance, has created a video tour of the fair with curator and writer Antwaun Sargent, a podcast with photographer Catherine Opie, and a Frieze audio guide, among other media; and to coincide with The week’s events, Maison Margiela will debut an 11-monitor video installation of Marco Brambilla’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 3 at its Crosby Street store. (Happily for anyone who misses Frieze proper, Brambilla’s installation will be on view to the public from May 5 through July 6.)
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