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Cushioned
Cushioned
photos of the artist cleaning printed on satin, low loft filling, fibre
~3’ x 2’ to 3’ wide’
2024
How do we recognize and value the labour that makes a house feel like home, not just a location, but as a place of comfort, safety, and connection? My work explores the relationship between invisible labour that sustains our households and communities and economic systems through mixed media installations. Drawing from my own body and daily rituals, I document moments of care giving, affective labour, and domestic chores in the home and transform them into visible, tactile works. I print photographs onto domestic textiles like silk, satin, and chiffon, which are materials that carry associations of intimacy and softness. I then preserve them with beeswax, referencing the ceaseless productivity and interconnectedness of female worker bees. By incorporating traditionally feminine processes like hand-stitching, quilting, and sewing, I reinforce the physical and emotional ties between care, belonging and connection. With this work, I create a ‘house’ not as a physical building, but as a cozy, warm space formed through effort, consideration, and love. My work asks viewers to reconsider the value of this labour, and to see it as the foundation of kinship, community, and connection.
Vivian Smith
Vivian Smith is an emerging artist who comes from a long line of women who could fold fitted sheets perfectly while simultaneously revising the family schedule, planning meals for her kids, and carrying on a conversation. She spent years balancing a career in engineering with the demands of household management and kin care. Recognizing the toll of this dual role, she transitioned to creating art that challenges societal perceptions of labour. Now, she creates art that transforms evidence of her own unpaid routines into artifacts that question why we value the chair but not the labour that keeps it clean. She has never successfully completed a load of laundry for her family without finding at least one sock hiding in a pant leg, and considers this both a personal success and a metaphor for how domestic labour refuses to stay neatly contained.
Cushioned
photos of the artist cleaning printed on satin, low loft filling, fibre
~3’ x 2’ to 3’ wide’
2024
How do we recognize and value the labour that makes a house feel like home, not just a location, but as a place of comfort, safety, and connection? My work explores the relationship between invisible labour that sustains our households and communities and economic systems through mixed media installations. Drawing from my own body and daily rituals, I document moments of care giving, affective labour, and domestic chores in the home and transform them into visible, tactile works. I print photographs onto domestic textiles like silk, satin, and chiffon, which are materials that carry associations of intimacy and softness. I then preserve them with beeswax, referencing the ceaseless productivity and interconnectedness of female worker bees. By incorporating traditionally feminine processes like hand-stitching, quilting, and sewing, I reinforce the physical and emotional ties between care, belonging and connection. With this work, I create a ‘house’ not as a physical building, but as a cozy, warm space formed through effort, consideration, and love. My work asks viewers to reconsider the value of this labour, and to see it as the foundation of kinship, community, and connection.
Vivian Smith
Vivian Smith is an emerging artist who comes from a long line of women who could fold fitted sheets perfectly while simultaneously revising the family schedule, planning meals for her kids, and carrying on a conversation. She spent years balancing a career in engineering with the demands of household management and kin care. Recognizing the toll of this dual role, she transitioned to creating art that challenges societal perceptions of labour. Now, she creates art that transforms evidence of her own unpaid routines into artifacts that question why we value the chair but not the labour that keeps it clean. She has never successfully completed a load of laundry for her family without finding at least one sock hiding in a pant leg, and considers this both a personal success and a metaphor for how domestic labour refuses to stay neatly contained.