Dust Prints: A Daily Practice
Providence, RI (2022-2023)
In addition to being a bed & breakfast set in a Victorian mansion, the Wedding Cake House is an ongoing artist installation project circling themes of repair and maintenance.
My experience innkeeping at the Wedding Cake House soon pulled me into curiosity about those who lived there in a working capacity before me. There is an abundance of historical records pertaining to past owners of the house, but very little to no documentation about the people who worked for them. In an attempt to honor the domestic laborers who cared for this space but were lost to its archive, I began Dust Prints.
Dust Prints is a durational piece in which every day I was on shift, I collected dust from my routine sweepings of the house to make a cyanotype. Cyanotyping is a photographic process from the 1800s that uses sunlight to reproduce astronomical notes and diagrams. Maintaining a house steeped in feminist history, it felt appropriate to work in a method popularized by Anna Atkins, widely regarded as the first woman photographer.
Photo by Julia C Liu, 2023
This body of work is dedicated to all service workers– in thinking of the recognition and tenderness they deserve. Thank you to Julia C Liu, for being my playmate in photography. Thank you Rhode Island State Council of the Arts, for supporting Dust Prints in its early days. Thank you On Kawara, for inspiring this project and the question of how we can hold on to a day. And, thank you Xander Marro and Pippi Zornosa, for dreaming up the Wedding Cake House in the first place. I am indebted to this project for my politicization around labor and feminism.
Soil
Dust
Sand
Wind
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