ARTIST STATEMENT
How do we assign value to labor that is unseen? I explore the complex relationship between unpaid labor and economic systems through mixed-media that transform personal documentation into visible markers of invisible work.
Drawing on my own body and daily routines as source material, I capture and preserve moments of labor outside of the workforce through photographs printed on domestic textiles such as silk, satin, and chiffon. I then preserve the images with beeswax, representing the ceaseless productivity of female worker bees and reflecting gendered expectations around care and household labor.
Incorporating traditionally feminine processes like hand-stitching, quilting, and sewing, I further manipulate and transform the fabrics, reinforcing the material and conceptual ties between domesticity and labor. The work is rooted in the rhythms of everyday life.
My latest body of work highlights the tension between capitalism and the gift economy, where unpaid care work, emotional labor, and domestic chores are offered not for compensation but out of love, duty, or expectation. Despite being the backbone of the workforce and by extension, our economy, reproductive labor remains economically invisible and socially undervalued, perpetuating gender inequality.
By embedding images of unpaid labor into objects with market value, the artworks challenge viewers to reconsider how society assigns worth to essential but overlooked contributions. In making this invisible labor visible, I advocate for recognizing social reproductive labor as integral to our economy through systems like Universal Basic Income.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Vivian Smith is an emerging artist who comes from a long line of women who could fold fitted sheets perfectly while simultaneously revising schedules, planning dinner, and carrying on a conversation. She spent years balancing a career in engineering with the demands of household management. Recognizing the toll of this dual role, she transitioned to creating art that challenges societal perceptions of labor. Now, she creates art that transforms evidence of her own unpaid routines into artifacts that question why we value the chair but not the labour that keeps it clean. Using beeswax preservation techniques developed during late-night experiments while waiting for laundry cycles to finish, she creates installations that make the ephemeral permanent and the overlooked impossible to ignore. She has never successfully completed a load of laundry without finding at least one sock hiding in a pant leg, and considers this both a personal success and a metaphor for how domestic labor refuses to stay neatly contained.
© Vivian Smith