A new art exhibition opening at Houston's Health Museum this Sunday is putting a deeply personal face on one of the city's most urgent public health crises: the disproportionately high rate at which Black women die from pregnancy-related causes. The Call Me Mother Experience debuts October 4 with an opening reception from 3 to 5 p.m., and it runs through February 28, 2027.
The exhibit was conceived and curated by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Houston's first Black Poet Laureate, who was inspired to create the project after writing a poem during her own experience with a miscarriage, according to the Houston Press. As Click2Houston reports, Mouton discussed the exhibit and her personal connection to Black maternal health advocacy in an interview tied to the opening, speaking with Houston Life co-host Derrick Shore.
The stakes behind the project are stark. Per Click2Houston, Black women are three times more likely than white women to die of a pregnancy-related cause nationally, according to the CDC, and in Harris County that gap widens to three and a half times more likely. Health experts cited in the same report say the vast majority of these pregnancy-related deaths among Black women are preventable.
A Project Years in the Making
The exhibition's film components trace back to December 2024, when the project received a $5,000 grant from The Idea Fund — a Houston re-granting program backed by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts — to produce what became known as The Call Me Mother Film Suite. That funding supported a blend of documentary-style film, digital storytelling, and spoken word poetry woven throughout the installation.
Mouton did not build the piece alone. A collective of regional artists contributed work responding to community health data, including Keda Sharber, Joshua Mouton, Omari Maynard, Stacey Allen, Vogue Robinson, ERA Vintage, and Andonnia, according to a post on Deborah Mouton's Facebook page. The resulting multidisciplinary exhibit combines visual art, video interviews, and community-created works into a single installation.
Opening Day Doubles as a City Honor
The October 4 opening is not a random date. It coincides with Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton Day, an annual municipal observance the City of Houston officially designated on October 4, 2023, Mouton's Facebook page notes. Mouton established the date to host annual community-focused creative initiatives, making this year's exhibit launch a continuation of that tradition.
The Health Museum installed the exhibit as part of its Healing Arts Program, an initiative built to explore the intersection of health science and visual art, according to the museum. The Health Museum serves as an anchor science learning center in Houston's Museum District, and tickets for the exhibit cost $5 for members and $15 for non-members, per Click2Houston.
The Data Behind the Art
The numbers driving the project's urgency are grim even by national standards. A study published in the Harris County Public Health 2024 report found that Black women in the county experienced a pregnancy-related mortality rate of 83.4 per 100,000 live births between 2016 and 2020, making Harris County the deadliest major U.S. local jurisdiction for Black maternal health during that period, according to Scalawag Magazine.
That same local data shows the Black maternal death rate in Harris County was roughly four times higher than that of white women during the same stretch, while the local Black infant mortality rate reached 11.66 per 1,000 live births — more than double the 2020 national average, Scalawag reports. Local public health officials emphasize that socioeconomic status alone does not eliminate these risk gaps.
Statewide figures tell a similar story. The 2024 Joint Biennial Report from the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee and DSHS found Black women across Texas faced a pregnancy-related mortality ratio of 39 deaths per 100,000 live births, more than 2.5 times higher than the rate for white women, according to the Texas Women's Healthcare Coalition. State health analyses published that year also indicated that 80% to 90% of pregnancy-related deaths in Texas were preventable, with provider- and facility-related factors contributing to 56% of pregnancy-related deaths among non-Hispanic Black women.
Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented in a February 2025 report that the U.S. maternal mortality rate for Black women stood at 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, compared to 14.5 for white women, 12.4 for Hispanic women, and 10.7 for Asian women, per the CDC. Those federal figures echo the gap Click2Houston cited locally, underscoring how the disparity Mouton's exhibit addresses stretches from Houston neighborhoods to the national stage.
