"MMIP Mother" by Rachel Espinoza

When I first became pregnant, I read that baby girls are born with eggs in their ovaries that may go on to become their children. So by that logic, you may have been in your grandmother’s womb when she was pregnant with your mother. The matryoshka doll shape is a visual representation of that, opening to contain smaller versions with the smallest often being a figure of a baby. But for missing and murdered indigenous people, their absence leaves an emptiness in us, symbolized by the open boxes holding red roses. The open boxes are also traditional coyote tracks that are going up into the stars as raindrops fall into the pottery patterned water along the bottom. It’s symbolic of the journey into the sky. The expression on the woman’s face is a mix of anger and grief.