‘En Son Sein’ is a tribute to the artist's mother’s career as a nurse and an important member of a breastfeeding support group in her hometown, Cherbourg, in Normandy. Cherbourg Allaitement - the support group in question - was created in the 80’s and was thought of as a safe space for women to give them the choice to breastfeed through information and care. It was defined for Boittiaux as the essence of the words community, sisterhood and transmission. As the meetings were held in homes, Boittiaux regularly witnessed this work. Going from giving breastfeeding advice to talking about sexuality, it was a space for anything they needed to share about their life as a new mother. She realised later on how it was the foundation of her feminist education, which showed her how much care is an act of resistance. 

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Later on, she went on to work with mothers who were separated from their babies due to being premature couldn’t b and had to be monitored in another department of the hospital: neonatology. She spent her career next to these mothers, listening to them, providing them with all the choices and giving them love and help within an institution where women patients are not listened to.

Cherbourg Allaitement doesn’t exist anymore, but other initiatives have taken over this work in the region. 

‘En Son Sein’ is an ode to women’s relationship with their breasts, community and feminist resistance. There is her mother, the faces of the women she helped and the landscape of the region, intertwined with embroidery and precious sculpture of breasts. Boittiaux see these body jewellery-like objects as a tribute and continuation of her mother’s work, in her own way and with the women around her. Each piece is thought through the testimony of the women it was made for. The result: a jewellery-like object that she has spent up to 20 hours making all by hand, like the hours her mother dedicated to the women she was helping.