The House Always Wins

2023, laundered clothes, household linens, price tags, 5’ x 7’

Domestic labor, while mostly unpaid or grossly underpaid, plays an essential role in the functioning of the world’s economy. It enables partners to leave the home and go to work everyday. It supports the physical, social, and emotional development of offspring who will one day enter the workforce. Disproportionately conducted by women, unpaid domestic labor is the supporting framework on which American capitalism sits. The House Always Wins highlights the sheer volume of domestic work conducted in a single-family home, the inordinate amount of time devoted to it over the course of 18 years and the equivalent unearned wages. It thus exposes the subjugation and injustice experienced by people carrying out this unpaid work; how bodies (mostly women’s), their labor, and emotional capabilities are continuously exploited in support of capitalism.