ARTIST STATEMENT
Our sense of self is altered when caregiving becomes primary, often dominating physical and emotional time. At the beginning of the pandemic, when I felt trapped in my home with my youngest child amid domestic labor without reprieve, my home felt heavy, overwhelming, and claustrophobic.
I began documenting this “invisible labor” using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) encoded in Keyhole Markup Language, the same system I use to track regulatory walks and runs. These collected records became a project named “Labor Made Visible.” Central to the exploration is continued research and contextualization delineating the pervasive historical gendered disparity inherent in invisible and unpaid labor.
Statistics indicate that 42% of women worldwide encounter employment barriers due to their caregiving obligations, while women and girls collectively contribute over 75% of unpaid labor and caregiving efforts globally. Movement toward a society that values care, its foundational support of tending, healing, and sustaining others, requires visibility of the disparities that interfere with its fruition.
To amplify the visual concept of making invisible labor visible, I created a collaborative project titled, “Mothering and More” (motheringandmore.org). Collected records from others offer a more comprehensive documentation of this labor. The work underscores the need for heightened visibility and concerted collective advocacy to navigate and effectuate sustained societal transformation and to create ecosystems whereby the support for caregivers is viewed as vital as the foundation it provides in culture.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Victoria Smits is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, writer, and researcher living in Eugene, Oregon. She studied English, Art, and Secondary Education at Calvin University, holds an MA in English Education with a concentration in creative writing from University of Buffalo, and an MFA through the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Her practice begins in attention: what she sees, what she notices, what energies affect her body. Smits explores the intersection of these discoveries with generational stories and epigenetic markers. It is a practice of material and matter congealing with idea and form. Smits has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Manchester Craft and Design Centre, UK, the Old Stone House in Brooklyn, NY, the School of Art Institute of Chicago SITE Gallery, and Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts in Lubbock, TX. Smits had poetry published this year in Gone Feral: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity through Demeter Press.
© Victoria Smits