Madrugada Nacimiento: Corona Santa (Catherine Ortiz de Liberty City)

Madrugada Nacimiento: Corona Santa (Catherine Ortiz de Liberty City) is a fertility effigy demonstrating the vulnerability and strength of Catherine Ortiz from Liberty City Miami FL. The votive triptych depicts an apparition of Catherine’s birth. The left wing panel depicts a ghostly, pregnant mother shrouded beneath an aqueous veil, whose dignified stance, restful eyelids and protective belly embrace shield her from the viewer and the world beyond. The right wing panel depicts a consoled, yet confident pregnant figure whose scintillating serape cradles a globe like exposed belly and a dewy, passionate stare directly at the viewer from a greenscreen interior. The central figure gazes skyward in a heavenly light, emerging triumphantly from a glistening, translucent cloak covering the mother’s ave maria arms, while exposing a honey glowing pregnant belly. The symbolic stances portray Catherine Ortiz, a Nicaraguan- American pregnant woman and front line worker from a mixed race and mixed immigration status family who prepares to give birth in a Mama Spa Botanica sanctuary. Part of the Linea Negra series documentary photography project (2007-Present), the triptych was taken while the Corona virus pandemic was crowning in Miami in August 2020 during the height of hurricane season. The artist and Catherine developed the image during a full spectrum Mama Spa Botanica workshop where according to the familial labor rituals surviving millenia in the Americas that were combined with syncretic traditions translated from pre-colonial period to today. The Cuarentena or Quarantine tradition offers community support in the form of rest and restoration for the new mother and baby as they recover the first 40 days postpartum.

Among the syncretic figures combining American, African, Asian, South Pacific and European mythologies, the Corona Santa offers essential, syncretic cultural traditions in the form of prayers to a votive against the veil of overlapping crisis such as environmental disaster or illness. Saint Corona was martyred for professing her Christian faith to the Roman Empire around 165 a.c.e. According to Roman Martyrology, she was arrested in Syria and tied by her feet to the tops of two palm trees which were bent to the ground. When the palms were released in the morning, she was torn apart. Santa Corona is venerated in Austria and Bavaria as the Patron Saint against epidemics, but evolves into a ceremonial figure in the Americas, representing the union of the individual and collective body.

Culture is medicine in historically redlined neighborhoods in Miami such as Liberty City, when vital practices are central to the survival of immigrant, melanated, Latinx birthing people whose assimilation into US American violence and policy dictates deadly outcomes in delivery rooms. During the Corona Virus pandemic in Miami, hospital births were increasingly dangerous as doulas were banned from hospital wards. Miami is the epicenter of the Reproductive Health Crisis in America for melanated birthing people and babies dying at 6-12 x rate of white women birthing in hospitals. Florida has the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the US, and the industrialized world where as of 2023 Journal of American Medicine 228 deaths per 100,000 live births doubled the highest nationwide state rate. Birthing advocates such as chosen or inherited family members, extended family or doulas have the biggest impact on decreasing birthing complications and death rates amongst immigrant, melanated pregnant people. Recent policy initiatives targeting low income communities of color such as Catherine’s in Liberty City, have created birthing deserts where hospital closures and legal C sections outside of medical settings- reinstate Jim Crow era institutionalized racism and structural violence in medicine. The Mama Spa Botanica project documents in sculpture and photography, the transgressive resilience and community justice work upheld by reproductive and climate justice leaders, along with their melanated neighbors to transform deadly statistics into fertility statues and powerful statutes.

The Linea Negra series photographs (2008-present) documents the inception of gender, power and race structures from slogans, slang, maxims and "old wives tales" to internalized, institutional violence. The works celebrate the melanin line appearing during gestation (most prominent in women of color) as a biological pieta; the first biographical mark on the procreative body and the first sign of our creative humanity.

Madrugada Nacimiento: Corona Santa (Catherine Ortiz de Liberty City) was exhibited at Bronx River Art Center 2021 in Unbearable Fruit: Coralina Rodriguez Meyer solo show, 2023 at University of Maryland Art Gallery in Mother Molds: Coralina Rodriguez Meyer solo show and in 2024 at Aoko group show at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.