Housekeeping

The art of home economics / 6 artists / 5 floors

Housekeeping — means caring for the house. The concept of housekeeping was formed in Victorian England to indicate the order of conducting a large household, and ensuring the proper and coordinated work of domestic staff. The classic 19th century edition “The book of household management” by Isabella Beaton (1861) noted two major roles that belong to women: mistress and a housekeeper. “The housekeeper must consider herself as the immediate representative of her mistress, and bring, to the management of the household, all those qualities of honesty, industry, and vigilance, in the same degree as if she were at the of her own family.” Mrs.Beeton

Covering all aspects of housekeeping, Mrs. Beaton presented the first in history regulated system of female housekeeping duties, that were concealed before. Later, the concept of housekeeping, for example, in the American tradition, was understood as a management of house by one woman, a housewife. With time, recommendations on economics reached the point of absurdity, becoming incompatible with the growing involvement of women in the public sphere. These regulations transformed from normative expectations to criticisms inside feminist art.

In today’s world, Isabella Beaton’s writing has lost its relevance, perceived, rather, as a historical outlandish artifact. However, inside hospitality systems and hotel business the concept of housekeeping exists as significant landmark.

We quote Mrs. Beaton, showing the beauty and ambiguity of the text and present in St. Petersburg Wynwood Hotel young female artists who develop the topic of housekeeping. They incorporate objects — mirrors, home gloves, furniture, dishes — in their works and give them impractical meaning. Items lose their purpose, becoming symbols of repetitive household duties, thus, projecting to a wider field of life processes in general.

We deconstruct regulation of England of the 19th century, and we try to identify it ‘s applicability to the modern day. On the formal level, we see mirrors by Alina Kugusheva that are Impossible to look into, or a “little dinner” by Veronika Ivashkevich, which cannot be eaten, or a series of photos of Anna Prilutskaya “Interior of the room”, where “the house stands upside down”.

The Housekeeping exhibition is open around the clock and runs until January.

Anna Zavediy, independent curator, head of the special programs department of the NW Branch of NCCA-ROSIZO, curator of the art residence in Kronstadt, jury member of Lumen Prize (London, 2018, 2019). Curator of exhibition projects in Myth Gallery, FFTN, NAMEGALLERY. Co-curator of the exhibition project “Paradise Engineering” as part of the Museum Line program (2019), Cyfest-11 festival (2018) and the Seminaria Sogninterra festival (Maranola, 2018). Lives and works in St. Petersburg.

The National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) as part of ROSIZO is a museum, exhibition and research organization whose activities are aimed at the development of contemporary Russian art in the context of the global art process, the formation and implementation of programs and projects in the field of contemporary art, architecture and design in Russia and abroad.

The North-West branch of NCCA-ROSIZO was opened in 1995, becoming the first of the eight regional branches of NCCA.

The first Curatorial Forum aims to develop and strengthen a professional dialogue, create new possibilities for the international partnership, mobilize local and regional creative forces as well as widen audiences for contemporary art.