The laundry

Sourcing a memory of an emotion: the weather is nice, a clear blue sky, you’re a child. Maybe in the garden, maybe on the street, playing, watching. Your mom comes out, hanging laundry on a cloth line. Everything is fine. You stand close to the laundry, feeling the cool dampness of the cloth, the fresh smell of detergent. Everything is fine.

The installation aims to isolate the emotion of feeling safe, feeling careless, being cared for. A kind of comfort and safety which is related to female care work. As long as this care work is being provided- the washing, cooking, cleaning – one is reassured that everything is fine.

Starting from an emotion, a memory of safety, transported into a room which is empty, sterile and completely absent of emotion. The clear blue sky turned into a blue neon light, the laundry absent of signs of an individual; normative white towels reminiscent of a hotel or a hospital, both institutions who provide care work, which in turn is being paid for and recognized as labour.