In a home: notes from behind the scenes at an exhibition

Abstract

This text presents a review of the art exhibition En una casa. Genealogía del trabajo de hogar y los cuidados (In a House. Genealogy of housework and care work), on show at the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM). It is a project that combines ethnographic research with an artistic approach and integrates three productions: an exhibition, a publication and a fanzine. This brief essay, written by one of the authors and creators of the project, has a double objective. On the one hand, to examine some elements of the research process that was carried out, which combined observation and participation, with archive work and interviews with domestic and care workers. And on the other hand, to give an account of the construction process of the exhibition, the publication and the fanzine. It is a visual and narrative proposal characterised by putting multiple pieces, formats, voices and temporalities into dialogue in a conscious act. The line that runs through and crosses all these elements is the reflection on the inequalities that intersect in domestic and care work, and the struggle of collectives of workers and social movements to transform this situation.