Throw Me the Dirty Laundry!
2021. Performance.
Throw Me the Dirty Laundry (2021) is a performance project that aims to question the power dynamics inherent in the everyday spaces we inhabit. After analyzing the various locations that shape my environment, the staircase emerged as the central element of the project due to its role in organizing hierarchical relationships within my home: both architecturally, as it connects an upstairs and a downstairs, and also through the daily routines it facilitates.
In my home, the staircase used to be a key part of the laundry process. It functioned as a communication channel through which flows of dirty laundry—thrown down—intersected with clean laundry—carried up and put away. Inspired by the phrase, “Throw me the dirty laundry!” which my mother used to call out to start this process, I created a performative and discursive reflection that seeks to draw symbolic connections between my daily experiences and broader political mechanisms of social normativity.
To do this, I replicate the patterns of my home’s laundry routine using a portable ladder, but in reverse: instead of throwing dirty laundry down, I “do the laundry” by tossing items of clothing upward, aiming to “score” them into a basket positioned above.
The quick and easy action of throwing the dirty laundry down from above becomes, by simply changing my position, a much more time-consuming and physically demanding task when done from below. Through this reversal, I attempt to highlight the inequalities and power imbalances embedded in the spaces and actions that shape our everyday experiences.