New York, March 8. The giant kitchen towels by the Spanish artist Elena del Rivero waved this Wednesday on the monumental steps of the New York City Hall, as a particular feminist tribute, loaded with irony, on this March 8.
The “Home Address” project, which was born in 2019 and which Del Rivero describes as an “anti-monument”, consists of hanging dirty laundry in public and historical places as flags and thereby reflecting the changing role that women have and have had throughout history.
Del Rivero, who lives in New York, calls them “monstrous rags”, and with them she wants to represent the journey of women in recent times: after being confined to the kitchen for a long time, they have come to occupy the public space and exercise power , and specifically in the city of New York, which despite having a male mayor, has a large part of its portfolios occupied by women.
In fact, dozens of women with high and medium positions in the Mayor’s Office posed this Wednesday with the artist and Mayor Eric Adams on the steps of the building, under the huge stained rags.
The mayor took the floor at that event and said that Del Rivero’s rags were a symbol of “the struggles and challenges” that women have faced in contemporary society, and each of their stains represented a story.
The kitchen rags were not only used to clean -he recalled- but also to dry the sweat or wipe away the tears of the mother or children, and there he could not avoid citing one of his favorite subjects: his mother Dorothy Mae Adams, a poor woman and barely educated, mistreated by her husband, who raised six children practically alone.
For Adams, who vindicated the work of all the women who accompany him in the Mayor’s Office, it is unfair how the work of many other women is forgotten or erased unless they occupy prominent positions.
