DOMESTIC LABOUR

I cannot look into the 'home' without taking into account the hours of domestic labour and maintenance work that goes into making a house into a home. It is the routine everyday activities. This work has been and is predominantly being carried out by women. I come from a privileged position of being raised solely by women: my mother was the earner, my grandmother was the caretaker, and for holidays I visited my great-great-aunt who lived almost completely off her land in rural Russia.
I want to spend more time to look at Social Reproduction, Feminism and the Commons; work by Silvia Federici, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Martha Rosler.

Washing lines appear in my installations a lot. Here's what I wrote about the washing line for my exhibition '3 O'Clock' (2019):


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'Colours of Wielewaal' (2020)

'Carpet Hanger' (2019)

'3 O'Clock' was an exhibition about my grandmother who raised me. I went back to my old apartment in Ekaterinburg where she lives now. I asked her to teach me how to make her Borscht soup. I used to eat it almost everyday after school. Every family has their version of this traditional slavic soup.
I made my grandmother's recipe into a film and projected it onto a sheet on the washing line. I put the soup pot with a tea towel on a pedestal. The embroidery represents the apartment location.
We also organised an event where I cooked her Borscht.
Visitors were invited to try it and share something about their grandmother.


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Sidenote:
For 2 years I was part of F*choir (a feminist choir).
I co-organised and co-curated Super Yonic (a 3 day festival/exhibition of 24 interdisciplinary womxn artists).

Soviet Russian posters spreading the message of 'Down with the kitchen slavery!' and offering unified mechanised factory canteens for daily meals instead. This was supposed to free women from domestic labour so that they could take part in factory labour alongside men.

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