The Duster Project with Vanessa Marr
Women & Domesticity – What’s Your Perspective?
The Domestic Dusters collaborative arts project invites women to embroider their domestic experiences, complaints, and celebrations as words or images onto a yellow duster.
This exhibition will showcase a selection of dusters that have been embroidered by women from across the world, challenging the legacy of so-called women’s work.
The ‘Women & Domesticity – What’s your Perspective?’ collaborative arts project, run by artist and academic Vanessa Marr since 2014, explores contemporary perspectives on the everyday lives of women. Through an open call, participants are invited to embroider their domestic perspectives, experiences, complaints, and celebrations as words or images onto a yellow duster.
Each duster is unique and hand-stitched, transforming it from cleaning cloth to craftivist act. Whilst conversations often begin around cleaning, this is not the focus, rather it is a route to discussing women’s lived experiences and expectations of care, the mental load, and the sharing (or not) of home-based responsibilities. The experience of embroidering a duster for exhibition also addresses the benefits of stitching for health and wellbeing and the solidarity of group participation and common experience.
The ever-growing collection includes hundreds of dusters that have been exhibited and presented widely in community, creative and academic contexts across the UK, mainland Europe, and Florida, USA.
