Building relationships
Labor Deconstructed is a visual and conceptual exploration of labor in its most intimate, invisible, and undervalued forms: domestic labor and the labor embedded in the institution of motherhood. Drawing from Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born, this exhibition confronts the tension between motherhood as lived experience and motherhood as a system structured by patriarchy. It questions: What does it mean to work within the private sphere? Who counts that labor? And what happens when we redefine that work as both essential and revolutionary?
The mixed media artworks incorporate domestic materials such as heirloom textiles, personal archival photography, and photography from the Vermont Granite Museum archives. These materials evoke the repetitive, emotional, and bodily work of caregiving. The imagery juxtaposes the unseen domestic labor done by women that supports men working in the industrial role. This contrast creates a dialogue between the labor of home and the structures that often render it invisible.
This work views motherhood not only as a biological or emotional role, but as a site of ongoing labor—both physical and emotional, visible and hidden. It engages with the daily, repetitive acts that sustain life—cooking, cleaning, nurturing, teaching—and repositions them as acts of endurance and resistance. Labor here is not romanticized but reclaimed as a powerful, creative force that carries both political and personal weight.
By foregrounding labor as the central lens, the work contributes to a broader cultural dialogue around feminism, equity, and the politics of care. It offers space for reflection, recognition, and redefinition of the everyday acts that shape our collective survival.