This giant baby statue won't stop crying until breastfeeding laws are changed

Sometimes can be nothing more distressing, or grating, than a crying baby that won't stop. That's why a statue of a giant crying infant is bound to get the attention of visitors to Reina Sofia Museum Square in Madrid, and it's all in the cause of introducing a law.

In Spain, there is no law protecting breastfeeding in public spaces, so nonprofit Teta & Teta and agency Lola MullenLowe developed the campaign to raise awareness about this but to also urge lawmakers to pass a new law, claiming that the baby is programmed to cry 24/7 until a Breastfeeding in Public Spaces law is passed.

“A baby's only weapon to get what it wants is its cry. That is why we have used this cry to fight for the fundamental right of babies and mothers,” said Saray Gonzalez & Helena Marzo, Lola MullenLowe creative directors, in a joint statement. 

A campaign video, below, showcases the statue. Testimonies of mothers’ experiences breastfeeding in public can be heard in the background; many were turned away or told to breastfeed in the bathroom.

The creative directors said that the campaign was vital in normalizing mothers breastfeeding in public. “The challenge is that we do not know when we will achieve it, and, therefore, we do not know how long this campaign will last. Still, we hope to have a proposed law on the table very soon,” added Gonzalez & Marzo.

​​The statue was created by Cristina Jobs, a hyperrealist sculptor, using 3D scans of several real babies. 

It's the second example we've seen recently of a nonprofit using hyperrealistic statues to grab people's attention in outdoor spaces; last December, UK-based charity Crisis built a 14-foot hyperrealistic sculpture of a homeless man with agency Adam&Eve/DDB and put it on the streets of London, in an effort to raise awareness about homelessness in the city.