Housework, Gender and Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesticity

Housework, Gender and Subjectivity: Cultures of Domesticity is an exhibition inspired by the work of early feminist artists and is curated by independent scholar/artist/curator, Molly Hankwitz. It focuses upon domestic space as a site for the investigation of multiple aspects of gender from the experience of real women. Opening Reception & Panel: October 29 in the Art History Lecture Hall adjacent to the gallery. Exhibition curator Molly Hankwitz leads a panel discussion on work in the exhibit with housework and domestic space as topic in art, domestic materials and domesticating ideas in women\u27s art practices. The panel is presented with artists Annetta Kapon and Heidi Kumao. ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Across many cultures, the role of the wife, the daughter, and duties of domestic labor within the household from cleaning to cooking to childcare and sex are frequently expected from women. In dominant western media, especially commercial advertising, the stereotype of the perfect housewife, her duties and commitment to products remains a powerful ideology despite progress in feminism to speak alternatives. This stereotype has been the object of significant comment and critique for women artists in the history of art. Installation, video and new media on view: Maria Ezcurra\u27s art is both humorous and sharply critical of domestic work, the universalization of housewife imagery vis-a-vis global media, and the oppression of Latin American women. Perfect Housewife\u27s Wardrobe (2008) is a series of large photographs in which the artist enacts scenes from the patriarchal home. In Liminal Beings (2011) partly embodied household technologies are petite collage works made from magazine and mailer images collected by the artist. Annetta Kapon\u27s art looks at women\u27s labor in the form of a non-traditional installation, Cornucopia (2010) made from baguettes, women\u27s clothing, and a plastic laundry basket, which literally spills forth from the corner of the gallery in an act of nurturance and giving. The work suggests a delicately controlled, even silent, at home and alone, notion of women\u27s labor, which speaks to the private realm of the household. Heidi Kumao\u27s Cinematic Machines, Holding Pattern (1999) and Kept (1993) are glimpses of cinema and memory. Comprised of zoetropes, projectors, screens, a child\u27s chair, and small coffee table, these pieces explore repetition and scale, use cinematic conventions and ordinary furniture to express the psychoanalytic dimensions of gender. Annie Abrahams\u27 new media work, Domestic Dancing (2007), designed for the computer screen in html and with sound files, contrasts artistic pleasure with the conventional domesticated subject to suggest a transformation in historic time for women. A selection of videos, which use household objects, food, household materials, domestic sounds, and elements of cinema to explore gender and domestic space will continuously loop in the gallery space.https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/rg-exhibits/1029/thumbnail.jp