These cookies are absolutely essential for our website to function properly.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs.
These cookies may be set by third party websites and do things like measure how you view YouTube videos.
Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
In this etching, an older woman holds a child upon her lap. Her hand covers the child’s eyes to shield her from the monstrous, almost hermaphrodite figure that comes toward her to perform female genital mutilation. Behind them in the shadows stands an older girl holding her skirt up. Is she next? In a box behind the chair is a child’s doll, arms raised in horror. Despite the title ‘Lullaby’ there is nothing remotely comforting about this image.
Paula Rego made the Female Genital Mutilation series in a protest response against the barbaric and inhumane practice of FGM that is still carried out in 30 different countries worldwide on girls between infancy and 15 years old.
