If you had a an overall joyful, careless childhood, have you ever thought about who enabled it, who made it possible ? I bet your mom peeled your fruits, picked you up at school, and researched which movie you could go and see together. Mine did. And my grand-mothers did, too. They made me feel at home. And I miss that dearly. But in parallel to living abroad and trying to build myself a home in new places, I have come to the realization of the amount of invisible work that has been restlessly provided to enable that feeling. For this reason I want to offer, through this collection, my version of recognizing, valuing and reclaiming women’s unpaid labour. To do so, I attempt to articulate my own écriture féminine, taking symbols of women’s alienation and claiming them as part of women’s culture and as part of what makes a lot of us identify as women or as non-conforming human beings. I searched through charity shops for typical, beloved pieces and made the apron into the centerpiece of my collection. It has been constantly manipulated and fetishized. I am claiming it back as the ultimate symbol of handwork, a piece of clothing that sustains and supports the household, protects the integrity of garments and is an overall object of care. I am twisting it, wrapping it around the body into a patchwork of a sentimental collection of thrifted curtains, bedsheets or table cloths. Every outfit comes on top of a catsuit or a tight tee-shirt that covers the skin in flowers inspired by glimpses of 70’s wallpaper and fabrics from my grand-mother’s photo albums. Under the flowers, the ultimate symbol of a marginalized femininity, I wrote my own kind of motivational messages, trying to switch from individualistic, straight-forward but impersonal sentences to intimate words that I wish are more open to interpretation and refer to a loss of illusions. P. S. : This is not written in third person because this is a highly personal and emotional topic and I wanted people to feel challenged in a very direct way. It had to be me addressing them.

If you had a an overall joyful, careless childhood, have you ever thought about who enabled it, who made it possible ? I bet your mom peeled your fruits, picked you up at school, and researched which movie you could go and see together. Mine did. And my grand-mothers did, too. They made me feel at home. And I miss that dearly. But in parallel to living abroad and trying to build myself a home in new places, I have come to the realization of the amount of invisible work that has been restlessly provided to enable that feeling. For this reason I want to offer, through this collection, my version of recognizing, valuing and reclaiming women’s unpaid labour. To do so, I attempt to articulate my own écriture féminine, taking symbols of women’s alienation and claiming them as part of women’s culture and as part of what makes a lot of us identify as women or as non-conforming human beings. I searched through charity shops for typical, beloved pieces and made the apron into the centerpiece of my collection. It has been constantly manipulated and fetishized. I am claiming it back as the ultimate symbol of handwork, a piece of clothing that sustains and supports the household, protects the integrity of garments and is an overall object of care. I am twisting it, wrapping it around the body into a patchwork of a sentimental collection of thrifted curtains, bedsheets or table cloths. Every outfit comes on top of a catsuit or a tight tee-shirt that covers the skin in flowers inspired by glimpses of 70’s wallpaper and fabrics from my grand-mother’s photo albums. Under the flowers, the ultimate symbol of a marginalized femininity, I wrote my own kind of motivational messages, trying to switch from individualistic, straight-forward but impersonal sentences to intimate words that I wish are more open to interpretation and refer to a loss of illusions. P. S. : This is not written in third person because this is a highly personal and emotional topic and I wanted people to feel challenged in a very direct way. It had to be me addressing them.

Diese Abschlussarbeit ist im Zuge einer Datenbankmigration (2022) in das Repositorium der angewandten migriert worden. Die Abschlussarbeit wird im Rahmen der Veröffentlichungspflicht (§ 86 UG 2002) zur Verfügung gestellt. Haben Sie inhaltliche oder redaktionelle Anliegen zur digitalen Version dieser Abschlussarbeiten, drücken Sie auf die oder den Eigentümer:in. Sie werden dann an den Support weitergeleitet.

This thesis has been migrated to the repository of the angewandte in the course of a database migration (2022). The thesis is made available within the framework of the obligation to publish (§ 86 UG 2002). If you have content or editorial concerns about the digital version of these theses, press the owner. You will then be forwarded to the support team.