Pretty pinks and dirty yellows: Changing domestic ecologies in the painterly collages of Jahnne Pasco-White

Abstract

Housework is a banal, grubby and non-spectacular aspect of life and economy. But, it is also part of a powerful hierarchical economy that endures relentlessly despite so much opposition and resistance. When housework is considered in relation to persistent and, indeed, accelerating inequity and injustice, it is more interesting and latently spectacular (but no less grubby). In other words, the way we work creates the world, but housework underpins and enables both that work and that world. Such criticism is traditionally called "social reproduction theory" (Bhattacharya, 2017), which looks at how the world keeps on turning and how it is supported by essential undervalued work. Recently however, the idea of "social reproduction" has been challenged by key scholars who seek to look closely at domestic structures but also seek to break out of their hegemonic formations (Haraway, 2016; Lewis, 2020; Cooper, 2017). Rather than just critically describing reproduction, such projects seek to critically recreate the domestic in a different image. In concert with this line of thinking, this chapter examines at subtle remaking of domestic ecologies enacted in Jahnne Pasco-White's painterly collages.