Every Mother is a Working Mother
Every Mother is a Working Mother is an art installation critiquing that care work is unpaid and undervalued.
The project is a table sized apparatus that compares tasks involved in motherhood to paid market alternatives: Laundry workers, cleaning staff, event organizers, nannies and cooks for example are all recognized as real jobs—and they are all paid. Yet the same work goes unpaid when done by mothers.
When visitors insert coins into the project and turn the crank, a figure of a cook and a figure of a mother start to prepare food. While cooking, the restaurant chef earns coins, while the mother does not—despite performing the same task. The mechanical system of the project mirrors the underlying systems of inequality driving our society that devalues and underpays care work in America. This project aims to highlight the immense, often unseen labor that mothers undertake—celebrating their stories, while also exposing the deep economic inequalities they face.
