Domestication Kills (2015)
"Throughout much of history in the West, the laws defining marriage made the husband essentially an owner and the wife a possession.
Or the man a boss and the woman a servant or slave,"
-Rebecca Solnit "Men Explain Things to Me", (61, 2014).
"Domestication Kills" aims to bring attention to the mundane and repetitive tasks of maintaining a domestic space, and the stress is creates when these expectations are gender-based. Using my mother as the subject, as the ‘modern’ housewife, the body of work exemplifies the daily grind and stresses that come with gender inequalities that still exist today. Drawing upon familial history, these scenes are part documentary and part staged to show the process and un-glamour of trying to live up to domesticated gender guidelines in heterosexual marriages.
The series of 9 images uses light inspired by AMC's "Mad Men" to reference back to the 1970's and to create a sense of drama or suspense within these everyday tasks within the household. Using my own childhood home as a backdrop, now occupied only by my mother after a separation, the work is a mix of critique, confrontation, and documentation, of what I have seen growing up but was told not to want for myself. “Domestication Kills” is an exploration of the weight of unnaturally justified responsibilities for a female, questioning why jokes about women getting back into the kitchen are still re-iterated today, but if men are shown maintaining a space it is marketed as 'Porn For Women'. There is nothing glamorous about housework, and being expected to maintain a domestic sphere, instead it slowly kills.
8 Portraits- 24"x34" archival inkjet. 4 Text- 17"x22" archival inkjet. Digital.