Victoria Smits, Labor Made Visible
Website for future collection of additional records: iammotheriammore.com (password: mother), letterpress of select GPS records
Victoria Smits (she/her/hers)
Labor Made Visible
began in March of 2020 with second phase beginning soon
10 etched acrylic pieces ranging from 22” x 44” to 42” x 44” of GPS records of invisible labor
22” x 44"
When a woman becomes a mother (or one has the role of mothering others), identity is altered - too often becoming mother first and individual second. At the beginning of the pandemic, when I felt trapped in my home with my youngest amid domestic labor without reprieve, my home felt heavy, overwhelming, and claustrophobic.
Hegemonic roles of women have historically placed them as responsible for daily acts related to domesticity - cooking, cleaning, laundry, kin-keeping, and more. While there are exceptions and evolving constructs of egalitarian home and parenting responsibilities, many women still hold the brunt of this weight. In a May 2020 New York Times article about potential changes of these hegemonic norms during the pandemic, Morning Consult polled 2200 adults and found, “Even though men and women are both doing more housework and child care than usual during the lockdown, the survey found, the results suggest they aren’t dividing the work any differently or more equitably than they were before. Seventy percent of women say they’re fully or mostly responsible for housework during lockdown, and 66 percent say so for child care — roughly the same shares as in typical times.”
I often track regulatory runs with an app called, MapMyRun (GPS). While completing domestic chores in the home during the pandemic, I became acutely aware of how even more dysregulating they became, exponentially so. I decided to document ten individual domestic acts (vacuuming, cleaning the house, organizing a storage area, for example) via MapMyRun, and transferred these to translucent acrylic.
We have completed a year in our homes during a pandemic that created isolation and heaviness. Our experience is collective, albeit uniquely ours as we endured the past year. Research has revealed and will likely continue to note how womxn who are mothers have been significantly more affected by the pandemic in negative ways. I created the I Am Mother. I Am More. site as a means to document Invisible Labor of other mothers as well, to form a shared and cumulative impression of this burden, especially during the pandemic. For those who contribute, I will etch two records on acrylic, approximately 8” x 10”, one for the project and one to be sent back to the participant. The collected etchings will be part of a larger exhibition.
Whatever the antidote is, cultural awareness is only the start. My purpose in creating this body of work is to make a physical record of the load of invisible labor. This project is for any female-identifying person, a mother or someone who mothers, including trans and cis women as well as genderqueer, and non-binary people.
@victorialsmits