Who cares for you? That is the essential question that Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao wants you to think about in her large-scale installation for the inaugural Mecca x NGV Women in Design Commission.
Titled La ropa sucia se lava en casa (Dirty clothes are washed at home), the installation at the National Gallery of Victoria uses the act of laundering clothes as a vehicle for exposing the inequalities of unpaid domestic labour, to spark a “care revolution” that would turn the preconceived values of society on its head.
The installation comprises a central washbasin, representative of an 18th-central communal laundry in the town of Huichapan in central-eastern Mexico. A series of collages and large wall drawings illustrate historical communal laundries from around the world and the social interactions that occurred in those spaces.
La ropa sucia se lava en casa (Dirty clothes are washed at home) by Tatiana Bilbao.
Image:
Kate Shanasy / National Gallery of Victoria
Surrounding the washbasin are a series of patchworked sheets, made from pieces of donated clothing and fabric. Bilbao ran a series of workshops in Mexico City, Berlin and Melbourne in which participants were asked to bring a piece of clothing or fabric “that represents someone in their lives who has performed acts of care for them.”
In each of the workshops that Bilbao had conducted, “everybody spoke about their mums. The same conversations were happening everywhere and it’s because care is primarily done by women. I’m glad the workshops have exposed that. But the majority of people are not aware this is labour,” Bilbao said.
“It’s women’s equality, but at the end of the day it’s everyone’s equality. Let’s say domestic labour is shared equally by men and women. Whoever does it is still unpaid. It’s better that it’s equal because we’re sharing the unfairness; but still, it’s discriminative because it’s not acknowledged or recognised as labour and it’s not paid,” she continued.
“What we’re trying to do here is understand the necessity of really caring for ourselves, and caring for clothes is one way, along with caring for children, caring for the elderly, caring for our own bodies, nurturing, making food – all these things.”
La ropa sucia se lava en casa (Dirty clothes are washed at home) by Tatiana Bilbao.
Image:
Kate Shanasy / National Gallery of Victoria
For Bilbao, care is the oft-forgotten thread in the fabric of a productive and egalitarian society, because the latter cannot existing without the former. “If what we’re all aiming for is the perfect full-time job and equal opportunities to all of us, then who does the rest?” she asked.
“Our cities right now are built on the necessity of productivity. Everything in the city is done to allow you to be more efficient, and whatever is not productive, we make it so that you are be able to produce easier. Everything, even the home, is designed in that matter. But if we surrender to production, then what prevails is capital,” Bilbao said.
“For me, what covid exposed was that we privileged people were sitting at home behind our computers working away. But the internet works because there are other people there working; our food arrives at our houses because there are people out there exposing their lives. When did we forget that we essentially need to be healthy and then produce?”
“So I think it’s very necessary to think how we transform our society into a society of care.”
NGV director Tony Ellwood said Tatiana Bilbao’s is a “compelling voice from outside of the traditional canon of architecture, offering a unique perspective on both its history and its future. A woman from North America, an advocate, and a spokesperson for change, Bilbao creates work that is as intellectually rigorous as it is visually dynamic,” said Ellwood.
La ropa sucia se lava en casa (Dirty clothes are washed at home) is on display until 29 January 2023.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
