Since 2014, University of Brighton lecturer, designer and textile artist Vanessa Marr has invited women to stitch their feelings about domesticity on to yellow dusters, producing a body of work from around the world.
Starting with the simple question – ‘Women and domesticity: what’s your perspective?’ – the Domestic Dusters project has become a global success, with over 700 women from around the world answering the call to turn the humble duster, an object of domestic servitude, into one of vibrant empowerment.
The project aims to empower women and girls to determine their own lives, including their domestic choices, and to challenge the gender bias towards domestic chores that still leaves more women than men with greater responsibility for unpaid labour such as care, housework and its associated responsibility and mental load.
It also hopes to lift the status of unpaid domestic labour, attributing it with the value it deserves as the invisible labour that the world depends upon (whilst challenging the assumption that this is so-called women’s work!)
Messages of frustration and celebration
The embroidered dusters range from basic stitching to the meticulously crafted, carrying messages of female frustration, celebration and anger as well as a wry take on domesticity. Wherever they’re hung, from exhibition spaces throughout the UK and Europe to the Welsh Senedd, they provide a vibrant splash of yellow and red. Red thread is used to match the duster’s red edged hems, and because of its historical representation of feminine sexuality and fertility.
Vanessa said: “Embroidery is a skill that has historically provided women with employment and literacy but likewise been used to keep us in our place – preferably quiet, uncomplaining, caring, and hidden away at home. Dusters were selected because as a mundane cleaning cloth, they share the cultural invisibility of so-called women’s work, transformed through embroidery into powerful advocates for change.
“Fundamentally this project aims to give women a voice where they are otherwise silenced, unheard, or simply ignored, building an empowering women-centred community through solidarity of experience and understanding. It addresses gendered domestic inequalities including everyday discrimination, such as the distribution of housework and caring responsibilities that still disproportionately fall on women’s shoulders, and supports those who domestic situations are compromised, for example through violence, displacement or unpaid caring roles. Hand-stitching is also a method that is accessible and has benefits for mental health.”
Supporting carers and refugee women
Vanessa and the Domestic Dusters project regularly work in collaboration with charities who support women those voices are silenced or unheard.
The project has recently been recognised for the 2023 collaboration with We Care, a grassroots charity who campaign for the rights of unpaid carers, and Oxfam Cymru, which invited unpaid carers in Wales to embroider their experiences on to dusters. The partnership, which was partially funded by the University of Brighton through its Impact Accelerator Account (IAA), saw dusters strung across the width of the Welsh Senedd building and around the central core of the upstairs level, above members of the Senedd sitting in session. Vanessa, Sarah Rees from Oxfam, and Katy Styles from We Care presented the dusters to the Senedd with speeches that called for better rights and steps towards a national register of carers.
University of Brighton has also funded the roots of another collaboration between Vanessa and Makani, an organisation that supports the empowerment of refugee women. Together, they will be working with a small group of refugee women later this spring to develop embroidery workshops with the duster that address the domestic challenges of homemaking and displacement.
Sharing the project
Following the display at the Senedd, Vanessa and Katy are using further IAA funding from the University of Brighton to produce a podcast and a publication to share the lived experiences of those who took part in their campaign. They hope that the visibility this will generate with policy makers and the public will highlight carers’ value and help them to get the support they deserve.
Vanessa marked International Women’s Day (8 March) with an online talk about her project for the Royal Voluntary Service ‘Virtual Village Hall’. Later in the month she will also taking part in workshops and presentations at Lancaster University, the Creative Bodies, Creative Minds conference in Austria and the Museum of Motherhood in Florida, USA.
The scope of this project is broad, but fundamentally it speaks to, for and about women, using craft as a tool for empowerment, solidarity, friend-making, positive mental health, and building a women-centred community.
Domestic Dusters can be seen at CraftWorks in London in May, and April through to June at Sunnybank Mills, in Leeds. For more information, see: Instagram: @domesticdusters and https://domesticdusters.wordpress.com/
