Domestic Dusters: Curated by artist and academic Vanessa Marr, University of Brighton, UK Embroidered by women from across the globe.

Research output: Non-textual outputExhibition

Abstract

The Domestic Dusters collaborative and practice-based research project asks how hidden and silenced female domestic experiences can be voiced through collective and activist craft practice. It invites women from across the world to embroider a duster, a yellow cloth used for cleaning popular the UK, with their gendered experiences of domesticity. Established in 2014, the 700+ ever growing collection is exhibited regularly in arts, community and academic contexts alongside publications that explore its roots in phenomenological drawing (Marr 2018, Rosand 2002), storytelling through craft (Marr, 2021) and autoethnography (Marr, 2022, Richardson 2000).

Dusters were selected as a metaphor for domesticity because of their cultural associations with so-called women’s work (Kirkham 1996), whilst the use of hand embroidery as a creative research method references women’s legacy of working with cloth (Barber, 1996), its association with oppression (Parker 1984) and more recent empowerment (Greer 2014).

Participants are invited via an open call that celebrates the DIY maker movement and craftivism, rooted in feminism. The embroidered dusters display women’s experiences of caregiving, the mental load, and the sharing (or not) of housework and other domestic responsibilities through words and images with humour and wit, sadness, anger, frustration and joy. They are presented without selection or exclusion, welcoming the solidarity of group participation and common experience. They include memories of mothers and grandmothers, tales of violence and homelessness, reminders of both privilege and hardship, and above all, frustration at the patriarchal framework that keeps women down.

This project fights against the tyranny of the kitchen sink through the power of storytelling, stitching and activism.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2024
EventCreative Bodies - Creative Minds: The third international, interdisciplinary conference in gender research - University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Duration: 25 Mar 202426 Mar 2024
Conference number: 3
https://creative-bodies.uni-graz.at/en/programme-2024/

Keywords

  • Gender
  • Activism
  • Craft
  • women

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