Homeworker

Homeworker is a curatorial project developed during a month-long residency at Central Saint Martins in collaboration with Arts SU and the CSM Library. Drawing on feminist critiques, I investigated the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism, tracing how the domestic sphere becomes a site structured by labour and control.

The exhibition reflects on how the “housewife” was historically constructed through the division of public and private life, casting women’s unpaid domestic labour as essential to the economy. As theorised by writers such as Veronica Beechey and Zillah Eisenstein, women’s roles as caregivers and domestic labourers are produced by patriarchal economic and social systems. While contemporary narratives frame participation in the workforce as empowerment, Homeworker questions this premise. Entry into waged labour does not dissolve inequality; disparities in pay and discrimination in hiring persist, while domestic responsibilities remain, producing a condition of “double labour.”

The works in Homeworker transform everyday home objects—microwaves, bed frames, chairs, letters and salvaged materials—into forms that expose the structures they typically conceal. Removed from function, they become sites where care and control intersect, and where intimacy folds into discipline and exhaustion.

The exhibition reveals the home not as a neutral refuge but as a structured environment where labour is obscured and value unevenly assigned. Homeworker positions the contemporary domestic as inherently political, calling for collective resistance and the rethinking of the structures that shape everyday life.