Beloved Labours in Pink

By
Jennifer Schuler
BFA Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, 2006

A thesis essay submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of:
MASTERS OF APPLIED ART IN VISUAL ART

Emily Carr University of Art and Design,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 2009

© Jennifer Schuler, 2009

Abstract
Beloved Labours in Pink, a praxis paper, is a form of colour study. It constitutes a
critical look at how the cultural associations of the colour pink inform my studio work
and its concern with my gender and body as an artist, domestic rituals as personal
performances, and the recognition of labour within the space of the home. My aim is to
provide a space with which to investigate how pink is a politically charged colour. To do
this, I will be analyzing the role of pink in relation to colour theory, popular culture,
gender studies, theories of aesthetics, and institutions of power.

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Table of Contents
Abstract...........................................................................................................................ii
Table of Contents...........................................................................................................iii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................iv
Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................v
Introduction: Beloved Pink.............................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Examination of Gender.................................................................................3
Chapter 2: Home: A Concept ........................................................................................9
Chapter 3: The Complexities of a Colour....................................................................19
3.1 Pink in Nature.........................................................................................................21
3.2 Pink Biology and the Human Body........................................................................23
3.3 Pink as a Gendered Colour.....................................................................................27
3.4 Pink and Taste........................................................................................................31
3.5 Pink: Regarded as an Embarrassing Colour...........................................................33
Chapter 4: Labour, the Body, and the Maker ..............................................................39
Chapter 5: Private Performances and Domestic Rituals..............................................56
Chapter 6: Conclusion..................................................................................................69
Works Cited.................................................................................................................71
Works Consulted.........................................................................................................79
Appendix: Documentation of Visual Work.................................................................81

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List of Figures
Figure 1. Jennifer Schuler, Home (a memory).............................................................10
Figure 2. Jennifer Schuler, I’m Gonna Love You Soft and Sweet................................13
Figure 3. Jennifer Schuler, Professional......................................................................15
Figure 4. Jennifer Schuler, Sketch for a Home............................................................15
Figure 5. Jennifer Schuler, Home................................................................................16
Figure 6. Agnolo Bronzino, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid................................22
Figure 7. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing.............................................................24
Figure 8. JeongMee Yoon, The Pink Project: SeoWoo and Her Pink Things ...........28
Figure 9. JeongMee Yoon, The Pink Project: Jiwoo and Her Pink Things................28
Figure 10. Pink hat my grandfather wore in the 1920s...............................................30
Figure 11. Portia Munson, Pink Project: Table..........................................................34
Figure 12. Jennifer Schuler, Pink Self ........................................................................40
Figure 13. Jennifer Schuler, Untitled (Openings)......................................................42
Figure 14. Jennifer Schuler, Traces of Labour (detail)..............................................44
Figure 15. Jennifer Schuler, Traces of Labour...........................................................45
Figure 16. Jennifer Schuler, Hidden Labour..............................................................48
Figure 17. Jennifer Schuler, Beloved Linens..............................................................60

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Acknowledgements
I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the people who have supported
and helped me throughout this thesis project. Thank you to my supervisor, Diyan
Achjadi, for her incredible amount of help in terms of feedback and insight. Her
consistent support has challenged both my work and my understanding of it. I would like
to thank Karolle Wall and Phil Smith for their immense generosity and help. I would like
to thank the members of the Emily Carr University community with whom I was
extremely fortunate to connect with during this journey. Thanks to Dale Gamble for his
consistent moral support and understanding. I would also like to thank my peers in my
program who have always been extremely thoughtful, generous, and encouraging.
Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for all of their generous help and
patience. To my dear parents, who have always been there for me and who have always
encouraged and supported my decisions and commitments. I am thankful for my partner,
Claude, for giving me the courage that I did not always see within myself and for helping
me embark upon and pursue this challenging journey.

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Introduction: Beloved Pink
During the second year of my Masters of Applied Arts degree, I
decided to create a body of work using one and only one particular colour:
pink. Through this colour I have examined the body, subjectivity, gender, and
notions of home. Beloved Labours in Pink has led me to explore domestic
rituals as personal performances and the acknowledgment of necessary labour
in the home.
My colour palette has always been very selective. In the past, I have
used images from pop culture that include fashion magazines and elements of
found objects from my surroundings as well as second-hand and dollar stores.
Due to the origins of these sources, my palette consisted of bright and bold
colours: cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cobalt blue, neon yellow, acidic
turquoise, and, finally, pink.
I decided to eliminate the other colours in my palette in order to focus
my attention on pink. As my visual work has evolved, my research and writing
has also been informed by this colour study. My research includes the study of
colour theory, visual perception, and cultural readings on pink. Some of these
readings include Karl Schawelka’s interpretations of pink within biology,
Judith Butler’s examination on gender, and Gaston Bachelard’s poetic
interpretation of home. To contextualize my practice, I look to contemporary
artists JeongMee Yoon and Portia Munson, both of whom have also examined
the colour pink in their work. Since moving away from the language of

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painting, I investigate feminist artists such as Janine Antoni, Carolee
Schneemann, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles as a means to position myself
within the discourses of performance and installation art.
I consider this thesis paper to be part of my process of making as a
visual artist. During the time that I was working on Beloved Labours in Pink, I
was actively working in my studio. By simultaneously writing, reading,
researching, and making, I was able to further understand the ideas that have
informed my process of making. While writing is always challenging and
painful for me, I have come to realize the importance of articulating my ideas
in written form and developing a critical distance from my work in a different
way than critiques or artist talks. By using a less formal voice in this paper,
my objective is to create an academic paper that allows for personal
reflections.
This self-reflexive process, in combination with my dedication to the
colour pink within this thesis project (both visual and written) has led me to
push beyond an image-based practice towards a political, critical, conceptual,
and material based art practice. As I look back at where this journey has taken
me, I realize that the most rewarding discoveries have come from a place
within myself. I have begun to understand how I operate as a maker. How
does a sexed, gendered, and “pink” body engage in the world of making? This
is a question that I wish to consider.

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Chapter 1: Examination of Gender
“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.”
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (301)

Within my artistic practice, I have been using the colour pink as a
means to amplify my work’s association with femininity. In the past, I used
the colour without questioning its gendered associations. Over the past
century, pink has become a gendered colour through numerous associations.
For example, pink is related to femininity through the labelling of infants
(pink is for girls and blue is for boys). Pink is associated with female genitalia
in pornography (“pink parts”) (Schawelka, Showing Pink 44). Pink is used in
the home to infantilize or feminize a space. Pink is used as a marketing tactic
to attract female consumers (by offering pink electronics and even tools). And
pink was used to label homosexual men in Nazi concentration camps because
they were not seen as “real” men (Haerebele qtd. in “Pink”).
The concept of gender within Queer Theory and Feminist Studies has
been debated over the last three decades. There has been an urgent need to reexamine a concept that was largely understood to be a biological or innate
characteristic of human beings. In Gender Trouble, a prominent contribution
to the gender debate in the last twenty years, Judith Butler explains:
Originally intended to dispute the biology-is-destiny
formulation, the distinction between sex and gender serves the
argument that whatever biological intractability sex appears to
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have, gender is culturally constructed: hence, gender is neither
the casual result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex. (8)
Butler goes on to point out that if gender is a social construction, which is
connected to a sexed body, then the concept of gender and sex can never be
the same because they are two fundamentally different characteristics (9). As a
self-proclaimed feminist, I am constantly questioning how both my sex and
gender influence my artistic practice in its making and reading. As my thesis
research has developed over the past two years, I have come to realize that my
chosen gender performance plays a significant role in my practice. Butler
argues that sex and gender are not fixed and static characteristics of the self.
They are cultural constructs that are closely tied to hetero-normativity.
Categories such as “woman” and “man” do not allow us to freely appreciate
the concept of gender as something more fluid (Butler 9).
In his book, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Michel
Foucault writes:
[...] to reduce all of sex to its reproductive function, its
heterosexual adult form, and its matrimonial legitimacy fails to
take into account the manifold objectives aimed for, the manifold
means employed in the different sexual politics concerned with
the two sexes, the different age groups and social classes. (103)
Foucault encourages the re-examination of the sexes and the need to look past
reproduction. But he also reaffirms that our society can be reduced to two
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genders and does not offer an alternative reading. Feminist writer Adrienne
Rich challenged the idea of heterosexuality (that category of sexuality that is
rooted in a binary system) in her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and
Lesbian Existence.” She argues that “institutions” such as “patriarchal
motherhood, economic exploration, the nuclear family, and compulsory
heterosexuality” have “controlled women” and “are being strengthened by
legislation, religious fiat, media imagery, and efforts of censorship” (11).
Through her research in feminist writings, Rich observes a lack of realistic
“lesbian existence as a source of knowledge and power available to women”
as well as a lack of authors dealing with “the institution of heterosexuality
itself as a beachhead of male dominance” (13). She claims that in none of the
sources alluded to in “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” is
the question ever raised as to whether women would choose heterosexual
coupling and marriage; heterosexuality is presumed to be the “sexual
preference” of “most women” either implicitly or explicitly” (13). With her
essay, Rich aimed to “challenge the scholarly feminist literature [...] and to
distort the experience of heterosexual woman” (11). While I associate with a
feminine gender and am comfortable with my heterosexuality, I want to be
clear that I do not consider heterosexuality a norm. And I do not agree that
sexed bodies must assume a gender identity mirroring their sex. Because I
consider my thesis body of work to be self-reflexive, I do not want to ignore
the role that my own identity plays in my visual work.

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If we focus on gender and not sex and we assume that our gender is a
socially constructed concept, then we must begin to understand what gender
we have “become” or “chosen” to “become.” Is it even possible to state that
we become a specific gender at a certain point in our life? Do I become a
woman by being part of a society? Or is it more an evolutionary process
involving time and development? Butler herself questions whether this
“construction” of gender is a matter of choice. She critiques Simone de
Beauvoir’s declaration that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”
(Beauvoir qtd. in Butler 11) because it exemplifies the view that “a cultural
compulsion to become one” is still present (11). We may not be born into a
specific gender, but our cultural upbringing will determine what gender we
may desire to become. This desire to construct a gender that mirrors our sex is
yet another example of how hetero-normativity works.
An alternative perspective of gender is the concept of performing one’s
gender. Instead of agreeing that I have constructed and become a gender, I
have chosen to look at my gender identity as performance. For example, in a
1993 interview with Radical Philosophy, Peter Osborne and Lynne Segal
describe Butler’s book Gender Trouble as appealing to many people because
she reframed gender as a space of “improvisational theatre, a space where
different identities can be more or less adopted and explored at free will”
(Osborne and Segal). If I consider my gender to be a space that I can choose to
occupy as well as shift and change whenever I choose to, then many
possibilities open up in terms of how I may wish to identify myself. Within the
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decision to explore these possibilities, how then do I decide upon a gender?
What occurs when I choose to perform a certain way? What happens if I
perform a gender that mirrors my sexed body? It is important to be aware that
performing gender is not related to spectacle. This performance is not a form
of costume. Rather, it is a way to examine one’s gendered identity.
Why do I choose to present my body in a specific way and in a way
that further labels me as female? The way that I have chosen to perform my
gender and present my body is integral to who I am. I do not feel secure and
confident in other gender identities. I am confident in my identity, confident in
my body, and confident in my performance. This confidence has given me a
sense of power. And this power that I speak of is not a power over someone
else’s body: it is a power over my own body.
This last year of research has resulted in this self-discovery. I have
come to look inside myself for further understanding and questioning. The
acknowledgement of my gender along with my body has presented me with a
space for a deeper understanding of my artistic practice. My gender and sex
play an important role in my work and the way that it is created. I have always
felt a connection to feminism and the work of feminist artists and thinkers.
When I first began to make work, I expressed concepts of desire and love as a
young woman experiencing them for the first time. This exploration of my
sexuality was how I realized that my work fit within a feminist critique. I did
not understand how personal my work was at the time.

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Writers such as Butler and Rich have helped me further understand
research that is occurring within Gender Studies. As a young female feminist,
I recognize and honour generations of feminists before me who, through their
political activism, writing, and art making, have made a difference for my
generation and future generations of all sexes. Not only is it important for me
to acknowledge my feminist perspective, it is important for me to continue to
contribute to the discourse of feminism. My position as a feminist is one that
is contemporary; I recognize the many choices that I have been given and am
aware that the roles I have chosen to take on are valuable. It is essential for me
to claim power over my body and to choose to present my body in a certain
way for myself.
My use of the colour pink within a feminist frame is political. One
would assume that because I believe in the equality of the sexes, I would
prefer to use a neutral colour instead of one that has been labelled “feminine.”
This neutrality would, however, limit the reading of my work. Since the
gender of the artist is often considered when viewing a work, I further
encourage this gendered reading in my intentional use of the colour pink. I am
interested in the emotions that this colour evokes. These emotions are integral
to my concept of “home.”

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Chapter 2: Home: A Concept
“Is it simply a curious anachronism, this desire for tradition, or is it a reflection of a
deeper dissatisfaction with the surroundings that our modern world has created?
What are we missing that we look so hard for in the past?”
Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (13)

Home means something different to everyone. I consider home to be
more than the actual physical spaces that we inhabit. A house refers to a space
composed of architectural elements. A home is more complex, less tangible,
and more poetic. Home is a memory, a space within our psyche that we retreat
to for safety or comfort. Indeed, home is something that we create through a
series of events, actions, and rituals. Domestic activities such as baking,
cooking, and craft making are my way of creating a home. One cannot help
but feel at home on a cold November night in the warmth of one’s dwelling,
away from the bustle of the city streets, where a stew is cooking on the stove,
and the smell of fresh baked bread emanates from the oven. The French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard has greatly informed the way that I define
home. He considers the home to be more than an architectural construction.
He defines it as a space where we naturally submerge into thoughts and
dreams (5).

Beloved Labours in Pink| 9

Figure 1. Jennifer Schuler, Home (a memory), acrylic, varnish, graphite,
pencil on paper, 2008

How does my interest in the colour pink relate to this feeling of home?
In early 2008, I began working on a series of drawings and collages that
incorporated images of the home and the domestic into my work. These
drawings were created by visiting my past through memory. I began
daydreaming about my childhood and remembering how my parents created a
loving, safe, and supportive home for me and my two sisters. The most vivid
memory that I can recall is feeling safe and warm. In Home (a memory) (fig.
1) (which is part of a series of drawings), the home that I grew up in emerges
Beloved Labours in Pink| 10

from the surface of the page by being engulfed or surrounded by oval shapes
of pale and deep pinks and gold. The home is defined by its contours and
surroundings. The coloured shapes are a place for the feelings of home to exist
on the page and in the drawing. I see these shapes as a depiction of love. And I
have used colour and simple shapes as a means to illustrate this enormous
emotion. A loving home would be a home where one feels safe and
comfortable.
“The word ‘comfortable’ did not originally refer to enjoyment or
contentment. Its Latin root was confortare—to strengthen or console”
(Rybczynski 20). I would argue that to feel comfortable in one’s dwelling is
the most important element of a home. However, in the past, the notion of
comfort was merely the description of a state of acceptability: as “one spoke
of a bed of comfortable width, although not yet of a comfortable bed [...]
eventually ‘comfortable’ acquired its sense of physical well-being and
enjoyment” (Rybczynski 20). When I remember how it felt to be comfortable
at home as a child, the strongest memories are not how comfortable my bed
was or how soft our couch was. My memories of comfort are more associated
to the dynamics of our home in terms of the feeling of our home. This comfort
relates to what I earlier described as the creation of home though domestic
activities.

The concept of comfort relates to the home as well as the body. To feel
comfortable and at home in one’s skin is, for me, connected to a sense of
Beloved Labours in Pink| 11

power and confidence. It is important for me to feel comfortable in my own
body. But it is not enough to feel at home in a physical body. It is also
necessary to feel at home in the cerebral body. It has taken me many years to
come to the point where I can now say I am at home in my body.
Acknowledging that I feel at home in this way has influenced my making and
my confidence in making.

This confidence in making was not always present in me. During the
process of evolution and experimentation over the last two years, I struggled
with the idea of evoking the sense of domestic comfort through my work.
Because I have always worked with images, I attempted to illustrate the
notion of comfort within the home. As a result of rigourous critiques from my
peers, I have realized that a successful work should evoke emotions and
memories rather than merely illustrate them.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 12

Figure 2. Jennifer Schuler, I’m Gonna Love You Soft and Sweet, acrylic and
mixed media on canvas, 2004
My earlier work consisted of photo-realist pop paintings. I was
comfortable working with images. The images that I used were derived from
collections of vintage catalogues, fashion photographs, diagrams, comic
books, and music. I combined these graphic images with loose mark making,
graffiti, collage, transfers, glitter, and stencilling. While still using the same
visual language and types of images, I also worked in embroidery, textile
printing, animation, drawing, and assemblage. My process involved working
Beloved Labours in Pink| 13

in a realistic yet slick style that was driven by my interest in creating seductive
and lush compositions. This is illustrated by my painting I’m Gonna Love you
Soft and Sweet (fig. 2). My objective was to create relationships between the
images on the picture plane. The reading that I anticipated from my viewer
was a sense of seduction (in the way that I created my images). I also wanted
my viewer to be involved in a process of creating narratives or conclusions
from my compositions (in the way that I combined my collection of images).
My objectives have since shifted. My desires now lie in what the work
can evoke. This shift in thinking not only came through my struggle to speak
about my concepts of home, but also through an exploration of materials
themselves. I realize now that my past two-dimensional works were, in fact,
limiting the experience of viewing the work. As Marvin Carlson explains in
his book Performance: A Critical Introduction, installation work has the
capacity to “move off [the] surface to claim significant physical and psychic
space in the external world” (101).
My first attempt at sculpture occurred while experimenting in the
studio in the fall of 2007. The exploration began with a painting that I made
(fig. 3) on a found object—a pallet—that was read by my peers as a
traditionally “male” object because of its roughness and reference to the
factory. I understand that male artists have been a dominant force in the field
of painting for many centuries. As a female feminist painter, I wanted to
critique this particular history by shifting from a “male” canvas onto an even
more “masculine” material: the pallet. The materiality of the wood, however,
Beloved Labours in Pink| 14

was far more interesting to me than this critique and the preciousness of my
painting. My initial manipulation of the pallet involved my desire to take it
apart. With a crow bar, hammer, and the force of my body, I split each piece
of wood from its original assemblage. The moment my painting existed in
strips of wood, I realized I could break free from painting. With these strips, I
began creating a roughly constructed sculpture of a house (fig. 4). The exterior
walls were painted white to evoke a whitewashed country home. The interior
walls were left unfinished since I still wanted to show the fragmented painting.
I now consider this house to be a sketch for a future sculptural work. It is with
this work that I discovered a new interest in sculpture.

Figure 3. Jennifer Schuler,

Figure 4. Jennifer Schuler, Sketch for

Professional, acrylic paint, plaster,

a Home, found wood, acrylic paint,

found objects on found material, 2007

nails, glue, clamps, 2007

Beloved Labours in Pink| 15

Figure 5. Jennifer Schuler, Home, wood, Plexiglas, spray paint, found
materials, 2008
In the spring of 2008, I began creating Home (fig. 5) in the form of a
miniature sculpture of a suburban home. Even at an early age, I was fascinated
with small creatures, objects, and worlds. I often imagined what it would be
like to be as small as a fairy. I would daydream about living inside of my
dollhouse. In her book, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the
Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Susan Stewart explains that the child
“continually enters [into the world of the miniature] as a metaphor perhaps [...]
because the child is in some physical sense a miniature of the adult” (45).
Bachelard states that “[...] imagination in miniature is natural imagination
which appears at all ages in the daydreams of born dreamers” (149). In a
sense, then, my work attempts to illustrate an element from the world of my
Beloved Labours in Pink| 16

imagination by creating a miniature sculpture of a home. Stewart further
describes how the miniature “always calls attention” to the entirety of the
object as a depiction of the object and a “situation within situation, world
within world” (44-45). This calling to attention could also be related to how,
by making a miniature, one can highlight the “real” world in that comparisons
can be made between the “real” object and the miniature “copy.”
I wanted Home to possess a bizarre and distorted presence in
combination with realistic attributes of a house. In the past, I was familiar with
creating “perfect,” “lush,” and “beautiful” images. But this time, I was looking
for a different vocabulary with which to work. I distorted the home by
elongating the structure and placing my windows in “unnatural” locations. The
effect was the appearance of multiple and split-levels that disrupted the
traditional viewing space. The glowing pink of the windows were my way of
creating a sense of human activity that we as outsiders observe. I intentionally
left some of the areas empty and hoped that my viewer would begin creating
their own narrative within this work.
The process of creating an object and image that would finally take a
three-dimensional form was labour intensive, challenging, exhausting, and
rewarding. Working in sculpture presented me with a different vocabulary of
making than my past work. Home made me consider my materials and realize
my potential beyond painting and drawing.

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As I entered into the second year of the Masters of Applied Arts degree
program, the risks that I had taken in my first year lead me to new areas of
inquiry. I decided that I would continue to push my work even further. It was
after a public presentation in the fall of 2008 along with feedback from some
of the faculty at Emily Carr University and my advisor that I decided to
eliminate all other colours in my work and stick to the use of pink. I began
looking into how this colour is perceived in different contexts.

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Chapter 3: The Complexities of a Colour
Colour as a phenomena is “a primary sensory experience for most of
us” (Gage 1). Yet it is far more complex in relation to the fields of science,
physics, and physiology. It has been discovered that, while humans recognize
colour, it is not identifiable by most other species on earth.1 When first
understanding the physics of colour, one must understand its relationship to
light. According to Aristotle, the physicality of objects, light, reflection, and
distance all play a role in how colour is made visible. In Colour: A Study of its
Position in the Art Theory of the Quattro and Cinquecento, Jonas Gravel
describes part of Aristotle’s theory:
The perceived colour is defined as an immaterial potentiality in a
transparent medium, actualized by light. [...] it may either be
caused by reflection of light from diluted substances in
unlimited bodies, particular from humidity in the air, or originate

1

Only humans, old world apes, and primates have the ability to identify colour

through trichromatic colour perception (Schawelka, Showing Pink 42). Three
channels for colour vision categorized in black-white, red-green, and blueyellow are present in the visual receptors of the visual system and make the
ability to see colour possible (Matthen120). Dichromatic colour perception is
common in other species and mammals, which does not give them the ability
to see and identify colour (Schawelka, Showing Pink 2).
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in limited bodies, viewed through the medium, i.e. the air. Since
reflection affects light, the perceived colours are in both cases
changed by distance. (14)
A consideration of elements such as light and distance has helped me further
understand human visual perception. In my classical training in visual arts as a
college student, in order to better use colours within my work, I was taught to
identify warm and cool qualities of colour by using the colour wheel2. The
Oxford English Dictionary describes the chemical composition of pink as a
“yellowish or greenish-yellow lake pigment (a pigment of reddish hue) made
by combining a vegetable colouring matter with a white base, such as a
metallic oxide.” Due to this chemical composition of warm tones, we can
begin reading pink primarily as a warm colour. While there are many different
tones of pink, with some being cooler than others, I am drawn to the warm
tones of pink because of their relationship to the pinks found in nature and the
body. I also read warm pinks as inviting, pleasant, and comforting. Cool
colours, such as phthalo blue or cobalt green, evoke in me different sensory

2

In 1813, Charles Hayter presented the “warm-and-cold ‘painter’s compass’

[...] in his Introduction to Perspective, a handbook for amateur artists” (Gage
23). In his book, Color and Meaning; Art, Science, and Symbolism, John Gage
states that Hayter “was probably the first systematic theorist to introduce of
the notion of hot-cold co-ordinates” (23).

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reactions, such as tranquillity, bleakness, loneliness, and even despair. The
way that we perceive colours as warm or cool could relate to how we associate
colour within nature. For example, it has been claimed by linguist professor
Anna Wierzbicka, whose works include cognitive science, that we
subconsciously associate warm colour with the sun and fire (Wierzbicka qtd.
in Gage 23).
Pink in Nature
Pink is visible in vegetation, animals, plants, and other living
organisms. The Oxford English Dictionary relates the colour pink to the
carnation flower. In her book, The Visual Nature of Colour, Patricia Sloan
writes that French and English associate the colour rose3 with the pink
coloured roses, when roses in nature also appear as red, yellow or white (6).
Karl Schawelka, a professor at the Bauhaus University in Weimar,
Germany, has written numerous books on colour perception. He has suggested
that the rose in fine art often appears as an erotic element (Showing Pink 43).
He also associates the rose and the colour pink with “youth, femininity, and
even virginity and innocence” (Showing Pink 43). I do not agree entirely with
this simplistic reading of the colour pink and women, yet classical paintings
have presented the rose and the colour pink in this way.

3

Rose being another word to describe the colour pink.
Beloved Labours in Pink| 21

Figure 6. Agnolo Bronzino, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, 1545, image
courtesy of The National Gallery of London
In Agnolo Bronzino’s extremely erotic painting, An Allegory with Venus and
Cupid (fig. 6), Cupid kisses and touches his mother, Venus. The glow of their
pink blush is very visible. It contrasts strongly with their pale skin and
intensifies their passionate act. A young boy also presents Venus with a
collection of pink roses. I would argue that the colour pink amplifies the erotic
subject matter. A less passionate colour for the roses, such as yellow or white,
would not have been as noticeable.

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Pink in Biology and the Human Body
Pink is present on the inside of the human body in tissues, muscles,
and organs. Indeed, some humans have pink complexions as well. Schawelka
claims that the colour pink is associated with the eroticization of the body and,
specifically, women’s bodies. He describes that when a “young, attractive
woman” is aware of male sexual advances, she starts to blush (Showing Pink
43). While he claims that both (implying there are two) genders blush and that
both genders might blush for reasons other than sexual, for him the
“phenomenon” of blushing is most commonly noticed when a young woman
is blushing once “they are the focus of sexual desire”(Showing Pink 46).
Blushing is also related to embarrassment and shame. Since Schawelka
focuses only on the act of blushing only in women, does this imply that
women should be embarrassed by sexual advances? How does shame and sex
contribute to the objectified reading of women (especially young women)?
What occurs when a woman is the focus of the male gaze when her
participation is active and not passive?

Beloved Labours in Pink| 23

Figure 7. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, oil on canvas, 1767, image
courtesy of the Trustee of the Wallace Collection, London

The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (fig. 7) is useful to examine
here. The woman represented appears to be blushing but she is also active in
the presence of a man’s sexual advances. The scene depicted in the painting
involves this woman exposing herself to a young man through the playful act
of swinging. Jennifer Milam explains that in eighteenth century France,
“swinging permitted occasions of sexual disorder where uninhibited positions
Beloved Labours in Pink| 24

revealed the body and spectators glimpsed views that were usually hidden
from sight” (545). The act of swinging allowed members of the elite to express
themselves physically, whereas such gestures would “elsewhere be strictly
controlled by the court etiquette” (Milam 545). Swinging and other outdoors
games were also popular during this period because the swinger “received the
physical benefits of exercise without an unbecoming expression of effort,
having the ‘double effects’ of being both active and passive at once” (Milam
548).
The scene in this painting is overtly sexual because the young woman
on the swing kicks off one of her shoes, perhaps to startle the male voyeur in
the bush or to lift her dress even higher, thereby exposing more of her flesh to
him. The role of the colour pink in the blush of the two figures flags this scene
as an erotic one. There are other sexual symbols included in the work. As
Milam explains:
The male hat [...] was commonly used in rococo art to hide an
erection. Here, the hat is off, indicating male abandoned to
excitement and passion. The opening of the cap conveniently
catches up some of the rose bush (a conventional symbol of
female sexuality) and with this fitting of parts quite literally
makes a visual pun on sexual engagement. [The act of swinging]
alludes to the fickleness of women in the emblematic tradition,
but also with its rhythmic motion, to the act of lovemaking. More
specific symbols—a tossed shoe (female abandon to passion), an
Beloved Labours in Pink| 25

unshod foot (lost virginity), an eager lap dog (impatient desire), a
statue of Cupid who silences with one hand and pulls arrows from
quiver with another (love at work), and a hat that caps a budding
bush (sexual engagement)—all collude with the primary emblem
of the swing to create an encoded, erotic scene.(549)
Fragonard painted The Swing as a commission intended for a private patron’s
“intimate retreat [...] that would encourage a similar degree of sexual licence”
(Milam 549). Although every detail of this painting is a construction, I am
intrigued by the female character’s empowered pose and active presence. The
colour pink in this work can be seen to embody a female sexuality that is
active and empowered.
Schawelka continues to focus on the sexuality of women in his text
when he refers to women’s genitals as “pink parts.” “Engorged pink labia play
an important role in pornographic contexts. The expression, ‘showing pink’ is
commonly found on the Internet with reference to nude photographs of female
models exposing their genitals” (Schawelka, Showing Pink 44). Since pink is
the only colour in my work, references such as these form part of the reading
of the work. However, my aim in using pink is similar to feminist artists such
as Judy Chicago, Hannah Wilkes, and Ghada Amer and their usage of female
genital imagery to celebrate and unite women as well as promote
empowerment by embracing female sexuality. In using pink, which already
has an association with sexuality, I am referencing sex and the body without
overtly using genital imagery in my work.
Beloved Labours in Pink| 26

Pink as a Gendered Colour
In western culture, the colour pink is often gender-coded. Through
consumerism and marketing strategies, pink has been constructed as a female
colour. For example, when purchasing clothing for small infants, most people
have noticed that our society is trained to categorize infants by gender through
colour.
On 28 January 2009, The Current on CBC Radio aired a special on the
colour pink. In an interview, Sue Palmer, Educational Consultant and author
of Toxic Childhood, suggested that the marketing tactic to push pink on little
girls has been occurring for quite some time now. Pink toys in the form of
Barbie, Cindy, and My Little Pony have been around for decades. However,
according to Palmer, it has only been since the 1990s as “TV stations and
commercial stations for children” increased in numbers that the bombardment
and pressuring have started affecting the choices and interests of children,
specifically girls, in relation to pink (Palmer qtd. in “Pink”).
Contemporary artist JeongMee Yoon was inspired by her five-year old
daughter SeoWoo’s obsession with the colour pink. In 2005, Yoon began
creating a portrait (fig. 8) by “assembling all of her daughter’s pink
possessions—stuffed animals, dolls, plastic toys, books, clothes, jewellery,
makeup, and school supplies—into an orderly display. SeoWoo’s bedroom
was transformed into a pink kingdom for a child queen” (Yochelson). Yoon
then photographed the perfect arrangement with her daughter also inserted

Beloved Labours in Pink| 27

amongst the “pink things” (Yoon). Since then, Yoon has continued to make
similar portraits of other girls (fig. 9). This project is ongoing and consists of
close to thirty portraits to date. For Yoon, this work
[...] explores the trends in cultural preference and the difference
in the tastes of children (and their parents) from diverse cultures,
ethnic groups as well as gender socialization and identity. The
work also raises other issues, such as the relationship between
gender and consumerism, urbanization, the globalization of
consumerism, and the new capitalism. (Yoon)

Figure 8. JeongMee Yoon, The Pink

Figure 9. JeongMee Yoon, The Pink

Project: SeoWoo and Her Pink

Project: Jiwoo and Her Pink Things,

Things, light jet print, 2006, image

light jet print, 2007, image courtesy of

courtesy of the artist

the artist

Beloved Labours in Pink| 28

My intrigue with Yoon’s portraits is with how they capture a shocking
image of childhood consumerism and obsession. Because the girls have been
asked to sit with their pink belongings, they appear somewhat artificial and
plastic themselves. Both of the girls are quite young and physically small.
Nevertheless, their pink collections of toys and objects are so large. In many
of the photographs, the girls are even difficult to see. Dressed primarily in
pink, the girls become a part of the obsessive tableau. I see the obsession with
the colour pink in this work not only as a problem among young girls, but a
problem having much to do with parents who purchase the objects and the
advertising market that is gendering how children develop, play, and learn
through the use of colour. The problem I am referring to here has to do with
the lack of choice that parents and children are now dealing with in terms of
girls’ toys not readily available in other colours.
It is important to point out that the gendering of pink is a relatively
recent phenomenon. In 1914, it was suggested by The Sunday Sentinel and in
1918 by Ladies Home Journal (Berg) that boys wear clothing in the colour
pink and that girls wear clothing in blue in the United States4. Pink was
deemed to be more suitable for boys because it was considered to be a stronger
colour in its derivation from red, a colour that still today is associated with

4

My family has evidence that this trend was followed; my mother recently

found a crocheted hat that my American grandfather wore when he was a baby
in the 1920s (fig. 10). To our surprise, it is pink.
Beloved Labours in Pink| 29

power and strength. It is unclear when exactly blue became popular for boys
and pink for girls. Blue “could have gained a masculine association because it
was used for school uniforms in the seventeenth century [...] in part because
blue dyes, relatively easy to produce, were inexpensive. Blue has also been
used extensively in many military uniforms” (Berg), perhaps attributing to its
current association with masculinity.

Figure 10. A pink hat my grandfather wore in the 1920s

Beloved Labours in Pink| 30

Pink and Taste
During the 1950s, pink was a very popular colour for appliances,
decorative styles, automobiles, and even radios. Penny Sparke states that the
colour pink was “linked with the idea of female childhood” (196). She further
explains that gender guidelines, enforced by parents with regards to their
young children, were common.
Since pink was, at this point in time, already associated with
femininity, “the use of pink in the home emphasized the essential femininity
of girls and women” (Sparke 196). However, as this feminine taste and
aesthetic was being popularized for women and girls, it was also criticized.
Sparke describes how
Pink and gold subsequently became linked with what was seen
as the vulgarity of 1950s consumerism. [...] Within early
modernism the antagonism of design reformers and protagonists
to women’s tastes had been both direct, and overt, in the years
after 1945 the attacks on “bad taste” and feminine culture were
more oblique, more complex, and a result, more subtly
damaging. [...] While gender was seldom, if ever, overtly linked
to the problems of mass culture and popular taste it was implied,
nonetheless, in the adoption of the masculinist modernist canon.
(198, 204-205)

Beloved Labours in Pink| 31

Modernist aesthetics within the home have influenced the reception
and acceptability of feminine taste and the colour pink up to the present.
Throughout my research following current trends in decoration, I have noticed
strong negative reactions to the use of pink within the home. For example,
when fashion designer Betsy Johnson decided to sell her New York
condominium, which was primarily decorated in pink, the Internet community
took notice. While the reviews were mixed, many decorating and blogging
websites reacted with headings and comments such as “Betsy Johnson Barbie
Home: Eeew!,” “House of Pepto-Bismol” (Kpriss), “Lovely place! Too bad
about the colour” (Michael), “Betsy Johnson’s Penthouse: That’s Rather
Hideous?” and “Most hideous apartment in Manhattan” (Curbed). When the
use of pink is encouraged within the home, it is mostly within strict guidelines
and rules (such as its sole use as an accent colour). “Too much and you could
get a bit of a headache” (Stein)5. Besides the use of pink in girls’ bedrooms
(further infantilizing the colour), it seems that today there continues to be a
limit to how much pink our society accepts within the home.

5

At one point during this project, I was looking to purchase a can of pink

house paint. My intent was to have a custom shade of pink mixed at a
hardware store. However, after discovering a shelf of rejected paint cans, I
noticed that they all where, in fact, shades of pink. To my advantage, I
discovered an array of pink paint shades available at extremely reduced prices.
Beloved Labours in Pink| 32

Pink: Regarded as an Embarrassing Colour
“I had always loved pink and hoarded pink. But when I was in art school, I wanted to
figure out a way to make it acceptable. To like and have around a lot of this colour,
which was considered innocent and passive, and for a girl.”
Portia Munson, Reclaiming the Body: Feminist Art in America (Blackwood)

Portia Munson’s ongoing work, Pink Project (fig. 11), consists of a
collection of objects that she began during her undergraduate studies in the
1970s at Cooper Union with instructors Martha Rosler, Barbara Kruger, Vito
Acconci, and Hans Haacke. When discussing this work, Munson claims that
“working with colour was not [accepted]—people didn’t do that. Art was
much more cold. It was a different kind of time. So for me, having a lot of
pink around was almost a way of being rebellious. [...] It was a challenge—
how can I make work that is political and also pretty?” (Liese). With my use
of pink, I argue that this tension still exists. In the past, I would worry
constantly about how my work was perceived because of my use of pink. Now
that I fully embrace the colour, I do not feel insecure anymore, even though I
know that the negative reading of pink still occurs. As Schawelka states, “Pink
is so often viewed as vulgar or kitschy and is one of the most vehemently
rejected colours of all. [...] Pink can easily be seen as a violation of taboo, an
undesirable affront” (Showing Pink 48). Unfortunately, these readings have
resulted in pink being, in some instances, considered as an embarrassing
colour.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 33

Figure 11. Portia Munson, Pink Project: Table, 1994, image courtesy of the
artist
From films such as Clueless (1995), Legally Blonde 1 and 2 (2001 and
2003), Mean Girls (2004), to Confessions of Shopaholic (2009), the colour
pink is used as a means to depict characters as less intelligent, immature,
artificial, overtly sexualized, and only having interest in fashion, make-up, and
shopping. These characteristics have nothing inherently in common with the
colour; however, Hollywood cinema perpetuates such associations, which
further stereotypes pink as less serious.
Over the last several years, pink has been used as a way to target
specific products to women. In her article “La Vie en Rose,” Vicky Frost
explains that “it is now possible for women to experience their entire day in
pink.” Some examples of pink objects that she references are “pink yoga mats
Beloved Labours in Pink| 34

and weights, pink wiper wings, a pink George Foreman Grill, pink hair
straightener, pink cell phones and laptops, pink tools, and even pink Taser
guns” (Foster). While this strategy suggests that women are recognized as
independent consumers, the pink objects do not offer anything different or
even superior in comparison to non-pink objects. In the case of electronics,
Foster explains how manufactures will sometimes improve or upgrade a
product aimed at men while for women they simply offer it in another colour
(Foster). Tools such as screwdrivers, hammers and pliers are now also
available in pink. A strange psychological message is conveyed when objects
such as these are marketed for women. As Foster explains, “these tools are
clearly aimed at independent, capable women, but there is this suggestion that
they need to constantly remind themselves of their femininity, even when
they’re hammering a nail” (Foster).
In the fashion and beauty industry, the colour pink is frequently used in
advertisements, products, and especially magazine covers. Due to the usage of
pink within these contexts, I argue that it is further stereotyped as a feminine
colour by associating it with products for women and by using it to generate a
specific interest in a market directed at women. Female consumers are either
attracted to the new colour choice or refuse to buy into the classification of an
object due to its colour (Foster).
Beyond marketing strategies, there are instances when pink, because of
its feminine association, has been used to passively control individuals. In
2007, the sheriff of Mason Country in Texas, Clint Low, “put all inmates in
Beloved Labours in Pink| 35

pink jumpsuits, he put them in pink shoes, pink underwear and pink socks. He
painted cell walls pink and put in pink sheets and towels” (Barnett 4a). This
decision had a direct impact on the inmates. The penitentiary had issues with
multiple repeat offenders and, due to the sheriff’s sexist strategies, they
noticed a sixty-eight percent reduction in repeat offenders. Clint claims it is
“not about trying to humiliate people. It’s simply that with them not liking it,
they’re embarrassed by it, and they don’t want to come back” (Barnett 4a).
While the tactic was successful, presenting pink as feminine within an
extremely male dominated environment further enforces the stereotype that
pink is, in some instances, regarded as a shameful colour. Even more
troubling, this example also reaffirms to men that being feminine is negative
and embarrassing in western society.
Pink has also been part of “a general system of domination exerted by
one group over another” (Foucault 92). According to Michel Foucault,
[...] the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in
which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as
the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations,
transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which
these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or
system [...] as the strategies in which they take effect, whose
general design or institution crystallization is embodied in the state
apparatus, in the formation of the law, in the various social
hegemonies. [...] power is exercised from innumerable points. [...]
Beloved Labours in Pink| 36

Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective [...] there is
no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives.
(92-95)
In order for the German Nazis to meet their perverse aims and objectives
during the Second World War, extreme tactics were used. One involved the
use of pink in the concentration camps. Erwin Haerebele explains that colour
served as a form of classification and identification of “enemies.” This
classification was, as Haerebeld describes, [a form of] “very primitive prison
management [...] to construct hierarchy even in their own man made hell in
order to control better” (Haerebele). While Jews were identified by the colour
yellow, the colour classification extended to include red for political prisoners,
brown for gypsies, and pink for homosexuals. Haerebeld claims, “I think they
thought pink was a feminine colour and since they could say that homosexuals
were not ‘real’ men they assigned them the colour pink” (Haerebele qtd. in
“Pink”).
Why do I insist on using pink within my work despite these cultural
associations? My intentions are not to further stereotype the colour, but rather
to challenge and subvert any stereotypes. In my current work, I am primarily
investigating domestic labour performed in the past and still somewhat today
by women. This labour is not glamourous or even pleasant. It is, however,
time consuming, physically demanding, and ongoing. I create tension in the
work by examining this domestic labour and its use of pink, thereby
subverting our preconceived notions of the colour. While I am embracing
Beloved Labours in Pink| 37

pink, it is not always bold or loud in my work. Oftentimes my work balances
the pink with white. My intention is to deliberately use colour in my work to
allow a space for alternative readings of the work, whether it is a culturally
charged reading or a bodily response to the colour pink.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 38

Chapter 4: Labour, the Body, and the Maker
The biological aspects of pink have informed my interest to further
understand my body as a maker (which includes the mind as well as the
physical body). This has, in turn, led me to consider the discourse of
psychoanalysis. I believe that Sigmund Freud’s discoveries were influential
and groundbreaking. As a feminist, however, I appreciate Joan Riviere’s use
of Freud’s theories to further examine women’s psychological states. Her
influential text “Womanliness as Masquerade” (1929) examines specific cases
with patients that illustrate how “women who wish for masculinity may put on
a mask of womanliness to avert anxiety and the retribution feared by men”
(128). The concept of masquerade within Riviere’s essay relates to an extent
with the earlier examination of gender in this thesis. I am interested in how
psychoanalysis has helped further the understanding gender and gender
identity.

In my initial inquiry of pink and the importance of my body in my art
practice, I began thinking about the interior of the body. Since the colour pink
is present on the inside of my body, I was intrigued with how this related to
psychoanalytical readings of the bodily ego. As explained by Freud, the bodily
ego “is itself the projection of a surface” (Freud qtd in Silverman 10). The
surface could be read as the physical body. Since the erotic zones of the
physical body are examined at great length in psychoanalytic theory, it is no
surprise that the bodily ego is also related to these erotic zones. Freud’s
writing on “erotogenic zones” focuses on the notion of perversion: “In hysteria
Beloved Labours in Pink| 39

these parts of the body and the neighbouring tracts of mucous membrane
become the seat of new sensations and of changes in innervations” (Freud 35).

Figure 12. Jennifer Schuler, Pink Self, digital photograph, 2008

In The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive
Energies of the Psyche, Paul Schilder offers a different reading:

The enormous psychological importance of all openings of the
body is obvious since it is by these openings that we come in
closest contact with the world. By them we ingest air, food, sex
products; by them we eject urine, sex products, feces, and air.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 40

We have therefore distinguished points in the postural model of
the body. These points are at the same time points of erotic
importance. […] Individuals in whom a partial desire is
increased will feel the particular point of the body, the particular
erogenic zone belonging to the desire, in the center of the bodyimage. It is as if energy were amassed on these particular points.
(124)

After pursuing this inquiry within my research, I decided to create a
painting that was specifically informed by these theories. I began thinking
about how I could capture the openings of my body as a representation of my
self and my “pink ego.” In order to capture the pink opening of my body, I
began creating a series of digital photographs of the inside of my mouth (fig.
12). I chose the opening of my mouth because the photographs appeared as
abstract images consisting of an array of pink tones. I was also fascinated with
the notion of ingesting the world, as Schilder explained, through the mouth.
Once I transferred one of these images into painting, I struggled with the
desire to depict and emulate the photograph as best as I could. The objectivity
of the painting became more prominent than the theory I was referencing.
Perhaps the painting was referencing the theory too directly. I struggled to
symbolize the theory instead of using the theory as a position through which to
view the work. I did not end up completing this work and opted instead to
draw.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 41

Figure 13. Jennifer Schuler, Untitled (Openings), pastel on frosted Mylar, 2009

I began exploring the mark in a series of drawings on frosted Mylar
(fig. 13), a material that, for me, refers to a skin or membrane. This work is
ongoing and I am currently creating an abstract image using oil pastel that
references the image in the painting or the digital photographs but does not
emulate them. While producing these drawings, I have become more aware of
my body. I want the mark to be saturated in colour and pigment. The best way
for me to obtain this is by pushing and drawing with my entire arm. Once the
colour or pigments are at the level of saturation that I feel is sufficient, I begin
to rub the mark. A rag with mineral spirits allows me to achieve a fluid
consistency. I rub the drawing for quite awhile, constantly pushing and forcing
my arm to make strong marks. As I am rubbing, I am immediately made aware
Beloved Labours in Pink| 42

of my body. It does not take long for my arm to become sore. The muscles are
tense and become tired. Occasionally, I stop and rest my arm, but not for long.
The repetitive movement of rubbing becomes rhythmic and meditative.
Because of the pain, I am never dislocated from my body or arm. At a certain
point, I stop using a rag and begin rubbing with my palm and bare fingers.
This movement heightens my bodily experience. My skin is in direct contact
with the drawing and the materials. My skin, the thin layer of myself that
covers my body, connects to the drawing on the Mylar. While Mylar is
initially a smooth surface, it begins to feel rough as the drawing progresses.

I have now realized that my process of making has always involved my
body. My work is created through the experience of touching, manipulating,
cutting, tearing, pushing, pulling, pouring, stretching, hitting, and bending
various materials and objects. In my past studio work, I was interested in
creating a final object or image. I have slowly noticed that, while the final
tangible “thing” is still important, I am more interested in how I am making
these “things.” The process of making is now acknowledged and made visible
in the work.

The work titled Traces of Labour (fig. 15) is an example of how I am
highlighting my physical actions in the work. After working in the studio for a
few hours on the series of drawings on Mylar, I begin the process of ending
my workday. This process involves washing my hands in the nearby sink. As I
look down at my hands and the thick soap foaming through my fingers, I can

Beloved Labours in Pink| 43

see that the suds are stained from my labour. The pink soapsuds are so
compelling that I know I have to save them. I know I cannot let them
disappear down the drain. I quickly go back into my studio space and look
around to see how I can save these suds. I decide to place them on a sheet of
watercolour paper. When I leave the studio shortly after, the suds are threedimensional masses sitting on the sheet of paper. I know that once the soap
has dissolved, something will be left behind. I return the next day to find that
the suds have transformed into a drawing.

.

Figure 14. Jennifer Schuler, Traces of Labour (detail), pastel and soap on
paper, 2009

Beloved Labours in Pink| 44

Figure 15. Jennifer Schuler, Traces of Labour, pastel and soap on paper, 2009

These drawings are direct traces of my labour in the studio. My
process of using oil pastels with my bare hands is recorded by the simple act
of washing my hands at the end of the day. The final drawing will be altered
depending upon which shade of pink I used and how long I have worked.
Traces of Labour is a work that will continue to exist for the length of my
“pink phase.” Since this initial experiment, I have made a drawing for each
day of labour in the studio. Due to the motion of my hands and the varying
intensity of the colour, each day of labour results in a different drawing. The
simplicity in the gesture of washing away the “dirt” has now become a form of
ritual, captured in a series of drawings.

Now that I have decided to keep a record or a trace of my labour in the
studio, I have begun considering how I will communicate this process to my
audience. Whether I hang this work in a straight line (fig. 15) or in a grid
consisting of thirty, sixty, or ninety drawings, the element of time and
Beloved Labours in Pink| 45

excessive labour will hopefully be visible to the viewer. If I present only one
of the drawings, with an artist statement, a different reading will occur. My
viewer might question my statement because the excess of labour will not be
visible to her. However, by presenting only one drawing, I am asking my
viewer to focus on the process rather than the volume of the work.
I used to be deeply concerned with emulating an image or creating the
“perfect” composition in my paintings. To reduce, reduce, and reduce has been
an extremely challenging but crucial process for me. I am looking at what all
of my actions and materials signify and how I can create work that is more
critical. By including my body within my process, I now ask how I see myself
as a maker and a body in my practice and how my practice operates within the
larger discourse of art itself. The physicality of my body is crucial to my
artistic work. My body is made up of cells, tissues, muscles, bones, organs,
and fluids. My body has a heart that pumps blood, lungs that breathe air, and
muscles that flex and relax. My body has a weight and takes up volume in
space. I cannot ignore that I am here on the earth in a physical from, asserting
my right to take up my space in our society, to be visible, and to let my voice
be heard.
In 1971, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, along with their students
from the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts,
organized a collaborative, multidisciplinary feminist piece titled Womanhouse
(Balducci 17). The objective of Womanhouse was to create “a space reserved
for women” (18) in an abandoned house in California in order to “deconstruct
Beloved Labours in Pink| 46

the myth of the white, middle-class housewife as a satisfied, fulfilled,
domestic goddess” (17). When it opened to the public in the winter of 1972,
Womanhouse was an extremely powerful work of art that included
contributions by dozens of talented, intelligent, and strong young women. The
initial construction of this work was just as valuable and empowering as the
final installation. In “Revisiting Womanhouse: Welcome to the
(Deconstructed) Doll House,” Temma Balducci explains:
[...] having been vandalized numerous times and already slated
for demolition, the structure was in advanced state of disrepair
[...]. The artists had to deal with basic maintenance issues such
as installing lights and repairing windows. [In addition] they
built walls and partitions, painted and wallpapered, and
refinished floors. The renovation effort entailed a steep learning
curve for the participating artists, as most, if not all, of the skills
needed to complete these tasks were generally associated with
men. Few of the women had ever worked with power tools or
had everyday dealings with hardware store personnel. (18)
There is a similar feeling of empowerment when I am directly manipulating
my materials (especially when construction is involved). In the past, I felt a
sense of satisfaction when building my own stretchers. The tactile feeling of
manipulating lumber, operating machinery, and having the skills to construct
something, were all essential to the making of the painting. Stretching a
canvas with my hands and using a large wide brush to paint the first coat of
Beloved Labours in Pink| 47

gesso on the raw canvas was an experience that I looked forward to. It was as
if I were preparing the soil for my crop, labouriously preparing the plane from
which the painting would emerge.

Figure 16. Jennifer Schuler, Hidden Labour, pastel on paper, 2009
Can I acknowledge the labour of making without actually showing it?
In Hidden Labour (fig. 16), I do not entirely reveal the labour of the work to
my viewer. My labour is present but not visible to the viewer. The work
consists of a drawing that I created using high pigment pastel sticks and a
sheet of heavy stock watercolour paper. I used these pastels to cover the sheet
entirely. This process was simple in its gesture, yet labour intensive at the
same time. With the force of my arm and the weight of my hand, I created a

Beloved Labours in Pink| 48

dense and bright colour field. Because my intention with this work was to
create an optical sensation, the solid colour field played a necessary role. Also
suggested was a laborious process, which relates to the conceptual element
behind this work. My intention was to recognize domestic labour that
continues to be unacknowledged in our society.
Rather than showing the side that was drawn on, I have turned the
work against the wall. By hanging the drawing several centimetres away from
the wall, the illusion of a glow is created. Light is bounced off of the pink
pigment on the sheet of paper onto the wall. While the drawing (or mark) is
not directly visible to the viewer, my objective remains to create a uniform
colour field drawing by eliminating the visibility of the mark. I have rubbed
each drawing to the point at which the intensity of the pigment is more visible
and prominent than the mark of the pastel. By not completely drawing to the
edge of the paper, it is impossible for the viewer to see my mark when looking
at it from the side. With this presentation, my actions have been completely
concealed and it is only in the ephemeral glow where the tone exists. While
this work has a minimalist form, its content embodies my interest in how
traditional women’s domestic labour is extremely important in the function of
a home.
As Dolores Hayden first states in her book, The Grand Domestic
Revolution, “cooking food, caring for children, and cleaning house, tasks often
thought of as ‘women’s work’ to be performed without pay in domestic
environments, have always been a major part of the word necessary labour”
Beloved Labours in Pink| 49

(1). Because this labour was (and still is) performed without pay and not as
valued as men’s labour, it is often described as hidden labour. In her article
“Valuing Women’s Work in the Home: A Defining Moment,” published in the
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law in 2005, Kim Brooks focuses on
how unpaid domestic work, primarily performed by women, is valued within
the Canadian legal system, specifically with regards to workers’ compensation
in the event of an injury. By highlighting a specific Canadian case, which she
describes as “a defining moment in legal recognition” (177), Brooks examines
how unpaid domestic labour is undervalued. She explains that
Work in the market sphere [the public workplace] is easily
valued, while work in the private sphere often remains
unvalued, despite the fact that many of those activities have
market prices, even if they are not actually paid in a particular
context. The unpaid nature of work in the home has
historically created excuses for policy-makers to ignore value
of work in the home—work that is predominantly undertaken
by women (178). [...] In the area of compensation for loss of
housework capacity, women historically have faced
discrimination [...] since it is not the subject matter of market
transactions, unpaid work in the home has been assumed not
to have a value. [This] bias [was] echoed in judicial opinions
that either denied injured women compensation for unpaid

Beloved Labours in Pink| 50

work in the home or undervalued that work when
compensation was granted. (186)
Within the specific case that Brooks has highlighted in her article, a
“breakthrough” was made with regards to recognizing the type of work women
perform in the home: “women perform two types of tasks in the home—direct
and indirect labour” (190). Direct labour involving often more physical
activities and indirect labour consisting of organizing, planning, mentoring, and
tutoring (184). Brooks further explains that
[...] women who work in the home develop sophisticated skills
in at least some of the domestic arts, [such as developing] very
special skills in response to their families’ needs; for example
homemakers may develop particular ways of preparing their
families’ favourite foods, cleaning and preparing their clothes, or
[...] providing tutorial services to their children that reflect their
unique needs, cultural backgrounds, and specific directions from
school teachers and other mentors. (191)
My intention with Hidden Labour is to highlight this problematic
understanding that domestic labour is not considered valuable work. The
choice to literally “hide” my labour (by turning the drawing around) aims to
further amplify its relationship and reference to domestic hidden labour. My
labour is integral to the creation of the pink glowing effect of the drawing just
as domestic labour is integral to a home.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 51

I argue that domestic labour is not only necessary for the proper
function of a house; it also contributes to the creation of a comfortable, warm,
and loving living space, which in turn is a home. Having much to do with how
the colour pink is composed of warm tones, I use this colour as a means to
illustrate, on an atmospheric level, a comfortable “essence” of a home. Brooks
asks: “How much does the loss of housekeeping capacity diminish the loss of
enjoyment in life?” (189). In my opinion, such a loss would profoundly
contribute to the mental and emotion health of the individuals in the home.
This work could also be read as a critique of the history of “male”
monochrome and colour field painting in the way that I, as a female artist,
have presented it as a minimalist pink colour field. As I mentioned earlier in
the section on “Pink and Taste,” colour strongly relates to “the patriarchal and
masculinist assumptions” of taste, decoration, and culture (Sparke 204).
Sparke explains that “taste culture” also named “highbrow culture” (in the
1970s) associated itself with modernism and refused to relate to mass media
and popular culture. She writes, “streamline products and plastic artefacts
which stood outside the modernist canon, [feminine taste] was generally
perceived by highbrow culture as being essentially ‘middle-brow’ in
character” (208). Thus, the assumption can be made that anything relating to
“feminine taste,” such as the colour pink, was not commonly found within
“high culture” or considered as “good taste.” While Hidden Labour is
primarily about labour and process as well as light and the creation of an
ephemeral work, by creating a work that uses minimalism and “good taste” as
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a form in combination with a laborious “feminine” colour field, this work
begins to challenge how colour can be political depending on the context and
form. I challenge the institution of “high culture” and “minimalism” by using
its form to visualize the necessary labour that has been performed for hundreds
of years by women who have never been appreciated as equals (to men) in
their patriarchal worlds. To push the work even further, I use the colour pink,
which has also been discriminated against within “high culture.”
In her essay “Painting with Ambivalence” in the WACK! Art and the
Feminist Revolution exhibition catalogue, Helen Molesworth examines the
relationship between feminist art and abstract expressionism and modernism
in the 1960s and 1970s. Molesworth looks at the work of artists Joan Snyder,
Howardena Pindell, and Mary Heilmann, all of whom “turned to modernism
[...] from both feminism and the early winds of postmodernism” (430). This
position attributed to “their own version of modernism” (Molesworth 430).
Being a successful artist during the 1960s and 1970s was, for women,
extremely difficult. Female painters experienced even more challenges when
persisting with mark making because painting is a medium “shackled by
centuries of tradition (from patriarchy to patronage)” (Molesworth 429).
Associating with feminism contributed to their challenges (Molesworth 430431). Despite their difficulties, feminist artists continued to paint. Heilmann
abandoned her sculptural work when it was not included in the 1969 AntiIllusion: Procedures/Materials exhibition at the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York. “Her rebellious act” to embrace “a material-based
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sort of conceptual, anti-aesthetic, earth coloured, ironic painting” in turn
became her version of Colour Field Painting (Molesworth 433). While
studying at Boston University, Pindell noted that her professor, Al Held,
would “make fun of the women. He got angry if a woman used certain colours
in her work,” especially when a women used pink in her work (Molesworth
434). As a result, Pindell “continued to use pink, of course, as did Snyder and
Heilmann, sometimes to such an extent that their work feels like a bit of a
dare” (Molesworth 434). Snyder’s approach to painting was extremely
expressive in that her “brush strokes often feel like angry jabs at the canvas,
and her flamboyant use of colour has been described as producing paintings
(Molesworth 435) “drenched with personal pain, stammered with rage”
(Herrera qtd. in Molesworth 435). Pindell, Snyder, and Heilmann have all
challenged the institution of “high culture” with their aesthetics. By combining
colours of “vulgar, or gendered hues” (Molesworth 439) in combination with
the modernist grid, or expressive mark making, these women have reclaimed
painting, which, as I mentioned earlier, is a medium “shackled by centuries of
tradition,” as a tool to express their powerful voices (Molesworth 439). When
showing Hidden Labour, I may not receive as intense a reaction as these
women did during the 1970s and 1980s when they showed their work.
Because of such radical gestures that occurred in the feminist art movement,
my work is not necessarily shocking. However, because I am combining
modernist and minimalist aesthetic with the use of pink, I believe that a degree
of tension is still created.

Beloved Labours in Pink| 54

The labour that I perform in the studio is not only important for the
work, it also acknowledges my position as a female maker. The gender of the
artist is always considered in the work. By intentionally referencing the
relationship between my gender and my labour (through the work), I am
allowing for a space where the viewer can further consider this relationship.
By reclaiming my gender as a maker, I am not allowing the viewer to
pigeonhole me as a secondary gender and maker in comparison to men. My
desire to speak about concepts of gender, the body, domesticity, and labour is
a way for me to reclaim these concepts in the execution of the visual work.
The work is my way of vocalizing my position as a feminist, a woman, and an
artist so as to reclaim the culturally charged, gendered-coded colour of pink.

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Chapter 5: Private Performances and Domestic Rituals
To use one’s body and self through performance art, whereby the body
and self become the subject of the work challenges the line between what
constitutes the subject and the maker. As an artist, I did not always
acknowledge my body and its involvement in the act of making. Emerging
from the 1970s and 1980s, performance art, also referred to as “actions,
events, performances, pieces, things, was largely and often very specifically
concerned with the operations of the body” (Carlson 100-102). “Performance”
art, and its emergence from a somewhat underground culture and a small
artistic community, often referenced the manipulation of physical objects,
theatre, dance, conceptual art, the clown, monologue, and stand-up comedy
(100). “Body art,” a more specific form of “performance art,” referenced the
artist’s body as an integral part of the performance piece. Amelia Jones, in her
book Body Art: Performing the Subject, argues that “body art practices [...]
exacerbate, perform, and/or negotiate the dislocating effects of social and
private experience [...]” (1).
The criticality in using or referencing one’s body when making lies
often in the sex of the body. When I include my female body in the making, is
the process read differently? I would argue that the consideration of gender is
amplified when the work itself is about the body of the artist. Perhaps this is
because every person performs her body differently. The following questions
are of concern for me: What happens when body art includes performances

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from daily rituals or “behavioural patterns” (Carlson 102)? How do we
consider the sexed body in these rituals?
During the 1970s, artists such as Tom Marioni and Bonnie Sherk
incorporated or highlighted everyday gestures in their performance works.
These included “walking, sleeping, eating, drinking, [and] cooking, to achieve
a heightened awareness of habitual behaviour patterns” (Carlson 102). In
1969, Alison Knowles performed The Identical Lunch, which entailed
representing “her habit of eating the same food at the same time each day, a
tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast, with lettuce, butter, no mayo and a cup of
soup or a glass of buttermilk” (Knowles). Since her 1969 Manifesto for
Maintenance Art, Mierle Laderman Ukeles has “brought unseen acts of
maintenance into public view as the art itself, turning a mirror onto the hidden
tasks on which our lives depends” (Mark 311). In works such as
Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside, Ukeles washed the steps of the main
entrance of Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the marble
floors of its Avery Court. For Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object
(1974), Ukeles, the conservator, and a maintenance worker cleaned the glass
display case of an Egyptian mummy (Mark 311). The gender of Ukeles is
important in this work because she is performing domestic rituals that have
primarily been performed in our society by women. Her interest in
maintenance within the institutional museum draws attention to her body as a
female artist. Within her projects, Ukeles has made visible the labour we
rarely consider, labour that is extremely integral to the order and function of
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our lives. Chaos would break loose if maintenance works were stopped for
even a short period of time.
What occurs when performance art is incorporated with installation?
Am I as the artist part of the physical work? Or am I simply making a
spectacle of my process? What if combining performance and installation go
hand in hand with one another, neither being able to exist on their own? In
1963, Carolee Schneemann created Eye Body, a work that consisted of her
nude body within an installation. Schneemann considers her body in this piece
as “a visual territory, an integral material, within a dramatic environmental
construction of mirrors, painted panels, moving umbrellas and motorized
parts. [Her body was] covered in paint, grease, chalk, ropes [and] plastics”
(Jones 2). Eye Body was performed in the privacy of Schneemann’s studio and
now exists in photographic form (Blackwood). In keeping with the idea of the
private and the intimate in Eye Body, Schneemann has chosen to use her body
in its true form: the nude. An extremely provocative gesture for its time—
especially for female artists—Schneemann conscientiously portrayed her body
as an “eroticized” nude (Jones 2). Her intention was “to use my body as an
extension of my painting-constructions [...] to challenge and threaten the
psychic territorial power lines by which women were admitted to the Arts Stud
Club” (Jones 3). What interests me in Schneemann’s work is this
determination to challenge the art world with the use of her own body. While
the female nude has been a prominent subject in the history of art, Eye Body
uses it in order to empower the artist. Schneemann’s powerful position is
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defined in this work because of her confidence as an artist and her confidence
in her erotic bodily self.
As an outsider looking in on the world of performance art, I have
found myself wanting to take part in this form of art that I consider
frightening, challenging, provoking, and powerful. My relationship with
performance art is different than when working with more object based
mediums. What I have come to realize is that I no longer desire to create a
final object. The process itself is rewarding enough for me. My objective with
performance work is for my viewer to understand this relationship. I want my
performative work to sit side-by-side with my other “object” based works and
for the former to have the same level of accessibility with my viewer. I have
also considered performance art as another way to explore and question my
sense of self. My desire to engage in this new practice has come through the
collection of materials. Beloved Linens (fig. 17) is a work that involves the
gathering of pink coloured linens from my neighbourhood’s second-hand
store. Because I use the material in a way that references its origins (the
home), Beloved Linens refers to a domestic and private realm.
As my work is progressing, I have begun to look at domestic activities
as personal performances because they are performed in the privacy of the
home, on a daily basis, and are not intended for a specific audience. I am
interested in reading domestic acts as rituals. Beloved Linens incorporates a
series of domestic actions in combination with the pink linens. After I collect
the linens, I wash them in my building, where I normally perform the ritual of
Beloved Labours in Pink| 59

doing laundry. I then travel to the studio by bus and hang them to dry on a
conventional pulley operated laundry line. These acts are then repeated every
day for seven consecutive days. As a new load of pink linens is hung to dry, a
previous load is folded and placed in a nearby laundry basket. At the end of
the seven days, the piece exists as a five-foot tall pile of folded linens. The
ritual is repeated once I expand my collection of linens.

Figure 17. Jennifer Schuler, Beloved Linens, performance/installation, 2009
Women have performed these domestic acts for hundreds of years.
During the 1950s in Germany, my grandmother would begin boiling water for
the laundry at five in the morning while the entire family was still asleep in
bed. She washed and partially dried all of the laundry without electricity, using
simple but necessary machinery that most of us today would not even
Beloved Labours in Pink| 60

recognize or have the slightest idea how to use. Now, at eighty-three, she still
hangs all of her laundry to dry. Her obsessive need to iron all of her laundry
(even her undergarments) is most likely a pattern or standard of working that
she has developed over many years. With Beloved Linens, I pay tribute to the
women in my life, such as my grandmother, who have washed, dried, ironed,
folded, and put away thousands of pieces of linens over the course of their
lives.
As I have chosen to place this work within the gallery setting, it is
important for me that it be seen as an installation as well as a performance. I
aim to alter and challenge the traditional viewing experience by introducing
smell with this work and therefore the linens are washed with a scented
laundry detergent. This, combined with hanging the linens to dry indoors,
creates an environment filled with the scent many of us associate today with
clean laundry. My objective is to offer the viewer another sensory experience
in addition to the visual. Jim Drobnick posits that “the authority of vision”
(10) has dominated the “five senses in Western culture since the time of Plato”
(10). He further explains that “the sense of smell has been subject to exclusion
and dismissal from the realm of the aesthetic” (10). Olfaction, a sensory
phenomenon, has not been fully explored within the arts until recently. Not
only is smell an intangible and irreproducible phenomena, it is also extremely
difficult to describe with the use of a verbal or textual vocabulary (Drobnick
13). Everyone’s sense of smell is different. We all draw different meanings
from smell, depending on the context, our community “social affinity and
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definitions of place, character, mood” (Drobnick 14). The body and “systems
of etiquette, dress and hygiene are invariably linked” with our sense of smell
(Drobnick 12). Jana Sterbak has played with the taboo of personal hygiene in
her work, Perspiration: Olfactory Portrait (1995), where she chemically
reconstructed her partner’s sweat into a “perfume.” In order to be activated, it
must be rubbed into the oil of one’s skin, “thus crossing a new threshold of
intimacy” (Drobnick 18).
Smells also have the ability to evoke emotional responses within
individuals. Mark Lewis commemorated historical instances of smell’s power
in his work An Odour of Disorder (1992) by “spraying such scents as leather,
tobacco, musty books, and gun powder at pivotal sites throughout downtown
Montreal” (Drobnick 17-18). As Drobnick explains, “smell functions as a tool
[here] to make counter-history acutely present” (18). The power of scent is so
significant because it is a sense that we cannot turn off (Drobnick 15).
Incorporating scent within my work, I am intrigued by its effect and power.
Bachelard writes that “[...] a whiff of perfume or even the slightest odour can
create an entire environment in the world of imagination” (174). Drobnick
astutely describes the phenomena that occurs with an olfactory artwork and
the viewer: “An artwork that must be inhaled, that fills the air with fragrance
and envelops the viewer, that seems to seep into one’s very pores, breaks the
illusion that a viewer exists solely as a scopic viewpoint, that is, without a
body, sensations, or feelings” (15). I am interested in this notion of being able
to experience a work corporeally. It is through the sensation of smelling that
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my objective with this work was to trigger memories of domestic comfort
within my viewer.
Most of the performances in this work are done in private. I do not
have an audience in my home when I wash the linens. The commute with the
linens, from my home to the studio, is done alone. The hanging is done in the
studio where my peers may or may not be present. On 11 February 2009, I
chose to perform one hanging in front of my fellow MAA peers. This one
public performance changed the dynamic of the piece in that I was more aware
of my actions and my body. Even though I did not change my actions (from
the private performance) in front of my audience, I had the sensation that my
gestures where dramatized and heightened. I believe this was partially due to
my inexperience in performance work. However, as I became more
comfortable, a sense of rhythm was created by my actions. When the
performance was done in private, it was more about a meditative series of
gestures. In both cases, I was acutely aware of the presence and movement of
my body. As Jones writes in the survey text from The Artist’s Body “[a]s the
‘meeting-place’ of the individual and the collective, the site where the private
and public spheres of the everyday life ‘can be traced’, the body is mobilized
by artists to activate and, in some cases, to erase the division between self, and
other, body and space” (26). With this work, I see my body and the way in
which I present my body as an extension of my materials. My dress is
considered in this work to further reference the normalcy of the actions; I

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chose to wear a different piece of my own pink clothing for each day of the
work.
Having the opportunity to look back at Beloved Linens and take into
account some of the feedback I received from my peers, some of my thoughts
around this work revolve around where the line is drawn between art
performance and everyday gestures. As I previously mentioned, Ukeles has
devoted the majority of her practice to what she calls “maintenance artworks.”
During her piece, I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day, Ukeles asked
three hundred maintenance workers to collaborate with her during this work.
In a letter she distributed to all of the workers, she explained her work in the
following way:
I am a maintenance artist. My work is called Maintenance Art
Works. I use my “artistic freedom” to call “maintenance”—the
work that you do, and the work that I do—“art.” Part of the time
I do private maintenance at home taking care of my family; and
part of the time I do public maintenance in museums and
galleries to show people my ideas. (623)
The idea within this statement that struck me the most is that when Ukeles is
performing her “maintenance work” at home, caring for her family, she still
considers it “art.” I am committed to making this connection with my recent
work as well. Because of my interest within domestic work, I must include the
rituals that I perform within the private realm of my home as part of my

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artistic practice. Ukeles made this statement thirty-three years ago. How is this
still relevant in 2009? Domestic rituals are activities that continue to be at
issue today. Domestic chores are activities that we will always have to face.
Despite the fact that the concept of a family, or people sharing a home, is
extremely different than thirty years ago (women are no longer expected to
perform these activities, different roles are performed by different genders,
same sex families, single parent families, single individuals living in a home,
or even roommates), domestic rituals still need to be performed by someone.
Because I am a woman, talking about this subject does not mean that it is
currently “feminine” work. Nevertheless, in the past, it was performed by
many women. My desire to examine these activities in my work has to do with
recognizing the importance and necessity of this labour. Because domestic
labour must be performed within every household in order for it to be safe,
clean, and healthy, I would argue that everyone can relate to my work. Ukeles
states that “We are, all of us whether we desire it or not, in relation to
Sanitation, implicated, dependent—if we want the City, and ourselves, to last
more than a few days” (624). Here in Canada, a wealthy country, we as
citizens do not focus much of our attention on waste and cleanliness. It is a
system that many of us take for granted. However, when an event occurs in
which this system is interrupted, we immediately take notice and recognize its
importance. In 2007, for instance, the citizens of Vancouver dealt with a civil
service strike that resulted in the interruption of the garbage collection service
for eighty-eight consecutive days from July to October. In the summer of

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2009, Toronto faced a similar strike. Sanitation and cleanliness are standards
we expect most people to follow. When the CDC H1N1 flu broke out
throughout the world earlier this year, proper hygiene directions began
appearing in public washrooms and in public service announcements. My aim
with these examples is to illustrate the necessity and relevancy of domestic
labour in our society today. It is in my visual work that I intend to further
highlight these crucial everyday rituals.
Before creating Beloved Linens, I looked to other artists who have
incorporated performance in their process of making for inspiration and
further understanding of this process of making. Contemporary artist Janine
Antoni “transforms the daily rituals of eating, sleeping, washing, and make-up
into a sculptural process” (Lajer-Burcharth 42). Antoni is fully aware of her
body in all of her works. She has created textile works that incorporate her
brain patterns while she dreams into weaving. The body’s cerebral
subconscious activities are documented in a women’s craft based material in
her piece Slumber (1993). In her series of sculptures, Lick and Lather (1993),
Antoni created fourteen busts of herself, with seven cast in chocolate and
seven cast in soap. The artist bathed with the soap bust to rub away her
features so that she is no longer recognizable. The process of washing and
scrubbing at her own face is an extremely intimate experience. Even more
intimate is when Antoni licks away at the seven chocolate busts so that they to
do not resemble her physical self. In her 1992 piece Loving Care, Antoni
continuously submerged her hair in a bucket of brown hair dye in order to
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have a sufficient amount of dye to “paint” the gallery floor in a mopping
motion. Her simple yet powerful bodily gestures reference notions of female
beauty and the relationship between cleaning routines and the female body. In
the essay “Antoni’s Difference,” Ewa Lajer-Burcharth explains, “by
mimicking not only the Abstract Expressionist stroke but also the quotidian
cleaning ritual, it [Loving Care] refers to the feminine body ensnared by the
tradition association of femininity with domestic chores while at the same time
alluding to physical realm of obsession” (50).
While my actions in Beloved Linens are very simple and repetitive
gestures, I believe these actions are integral to the installation (just as Antoni’s
actions are integral to her sculptures). They highlight an activity that was
traditionally considered both women’s labour and domestic labour. By
performing repetitive gestures and inviting my viewer to watch on a daily
basis, I am highlighting the mundane and necessary ritual of washing.
Domestic work never ends: the garbage must be taken out, the dishes washed
(or placed in the dishwasher), the furniture must be dusted, and the laundry
must be done. Through my actions, I am recognizing this labour as valid and
crucial even in contemporary times. I am asking my viewer to look more
closely at this labour because, as Bachelard says, “to use a magnifying glass is
to pay attention, but isn’t paying attention already having a magnifying glass?
Attention by itself is an enlarging glass” (158). My role as an artist is to place
a magnifying glass over elements of our world so as to invite further analysis
and discussions. I recognize that hanging laundry to dry is no longer
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performed by the majority of our population; nonetheless, I chose these
actions because of their simple and repetitive gestures. Placing the magnifying
glass over myself, I have become aware that my body as a maker has always
influenced my material practice.

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Conclusion
By including the analysis of the self in this work, I have not only begun
to question but also understand how I operate as a maker. My time at Emily
Carr University has led me to a space of deeper critical thinking. My thesis
work has pushed my ideas of being a feminist artist through my examination
of colour. I now question my gendered body within my practice and how it
impacts the making and reading of the work. I did not consider this a
significant part of my practice before. Not only has my thinking changed, my
materials have changed as well. I have broken free of my painting-based
practice and am now more inspired by practices in performance and
installation.
Where has this journey led? Pink has allowed me to explore many
avenues of inquiry that have helped me to understand myself as a gendered
visual artist. My objective is to continue to move forward with my pink body
of work with a focus on domestic labour as necessary and valid. I am currently
working on a series that incorporates found text to further illustrate domestic
labour. My intention is to continue working on Beloved Linens and Traces of
Labour since I consider them to be ongoing projects. My intent is to propose
Beloved Linens for future exhibitions as a means to continue the necessary
labour of washing and hanging linens. I would like to continue blurring the
line between my artistic practice and personal life by pursuing more
performance-based projects. The evolution of this project and the development
of my practice have led me to a point where I now am engaging in a more
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political and critical discourse within my practice as a visual artist. When I
began this journey, I could not imagine the colour pink would lead me to
where I am at this present moment.

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“ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.” The Australian National University. 31 March
2003. 3 March 2009.
<http://arts.anu.edu.au/languages/linguistics/AnnaW.asp>
Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials. The Whitney Museum, New York, USA. 1969
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 3rd ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
Balducci, Temma. “Revisiting Womanhouse: Welcome to the (Deconstructed) Dollhouse.”
Woman’s Art Journal. 27.2. Fall/Winter 2006: 17-23. HW Wilson Web. ECU Library.
Vancouver. 21 January 2008.

Barnett, Ron. “Prisoners in Pink: Deterrent or Scarlet Mark of Danger?” USA Today (n.d.).
Academic Search Premier. EBSCOHost. ECU Library. Vancouver. 7 November 2008.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.eciad.ca:2048/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=7&sid=30b52
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&AN=J0E229586883207 >
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. and ed. H.M. Parshley. London: D. Campbell,
1973.
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