Cleaning, Cooking, Caring. Care Work in Art in Western- and Eastern Europe, in the USA and Latin America since 1960

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Since the 1960s, female artists around the world have been critically engaged with gender politics and the social consequences of care work. In the wake of second-wave feminism beginning in the 1960s, in particular, the “Wages for Housework” campaign launched in Marxist circles, they began to develop artistic techniques and processes to articulate demands for a new, equitable distribution of labor. It is the aim of this research project to generate an overview, analysis and contextualization, as well as a critical evaluation of reproductive labor in art since 1960. In three interlocking parts, each with its unique regional and thematic focus, the project examines how reproductive labor is made visible in art: Section I, “Cleaning in the Museum: Reproductive and Care Work as a Provocation of Contemporary Art” investigates artistic-reproductive processes in terms of their relationship to questions of creativity, technique, and the debate on skill and de-skilling. Section II, “Double Shift in East and West: The Care/Worker between Assembly Line and Kitchen in Art 1960 to 1990” examines works of art that deal with the double burden of women between care work and factory labor, to ask what parallels and differences exist here between Eastern and Western Europe. Section III, “‘Women Who Organize Don’t Iron Shirts’ (Mujeres Creando): Care Work in Latin American Art Since the 1980s” examines works of art from the 1980s to the present that, in the context of globalization and migrant labor, thematize feminist artistic practice concerning reproductive labor in Latin America.