Domestic workers use arts to voice rights in Europe

LONDON – Over years of campaigning for rights and recognition, domestic workers are finding a stronger voice through visual arts by using every medium and platform they can access as tools for their campaigns.

Vulnerable domestic workers in Europe have been fighting for their rights for many years, often battling against abuse from employers, as well as ongoing changes on immigration policies that seem to ebb and flow depending on the day’s politics, crises and public opinion.

In London, a collective known as Justice 4 Domestic Workers (J4DW) is at the forefront of this struggle, consisted of UK-based domestic workers from different countries including Indonesia, Nigeria, Morocco and the Philippines, where most of them originate.

With the support of UK labor group Unite the Union, alongside a host of philanthropic organizations, the group and their causes are becoming increasingly visible in British society through various art projects since its launch in 2009.

Most recently, in April, the group participated in a public discussion and art workshop hosted by Tate Modern, a museum for contemporary art, together with The Showroom, a gallery supporting artistic community projects.

Dubbed as “Work Like This”, the event featured artists and activists working on projects about domestic work, highlighting a mutual struggle for recognition and visibility in wider society.

“It was interesting to look at how different artists take up this idea of invisibility and visibility, and work in a way that is parallel to the work that Justice 4 Domestic Workers is doing,” explained Nora Razian, curator of adult program at Tate Modern.

Speaking to ABS-CBN Europe, she continued: “It’s very interesting the way they think about making domestic work visible in society. And there’s lots of artists who have constantly brought the subject of domestic work up in their artwork, and art is engaged with making issues visible to a wider public.”

Razian, who has been working with J4DW for a year, also noted a long tradition in art to study domestic work in relation to universal themes of gender equality, labor rights and migration.

“From the 60s and 70s, there’s a long history of artists who have taken up this issue of domestic work, feminism, visibility, and fighting for rights. Of course, now, the idea of domestic work is also tied up with the ideas of gendered migration, women in the home, but also migrant domestic workers, so it’s a broader issue because of the after-effects of globalization,” she said.

Andrea Francke, a UK-based Peruvian artist, was among the speakers at the event. She is currently working on a project that explores what she refers to as “invisible spaces” in domestic work, with particular focus on parenthood and child care.

“I think work can be really useful to raise questions and visibility, and I’m really interested in artwork that propose solutions for it,” she said.

“I didn’t think of domestic work before I had a child. It was a big change, and the realization that domestic work was invisible, and now as a parent I was part of domestic work so I was invisible as well.”

Fighting with paint, brushes

For domestic workers, art projects like this have become a fundamental part of their ongoing campaign for rights and recognition.

“The arts help us to discuss domestic work in society as we work towards the visibility in British society,” said Marissa Begonia, a Filipina domestic worker, human rights activist, and coordinator for J4DW.

“We’ve been working with [arts organizations] to bring out more of what is inside the household. We wanted to connect that to the professional workers who are our employers – the way that we allow them to do their respective jobs, that they have domestic workers doing another set of jobs they’re supposed to do but they are unable to do because they have their own work, so connecting all that through the work of the artist.”

Among their previous foray into the arts was a graffiti project with ASK! and The Showroom, where they spray painted images of domestic workers and slogans on designated public areas.

They have also been involved in various video projects, including a short film for ILO TV, the YouTube channel of United Nation’s International Labour Organization, which has created the ILO Convention 189 to enforce an international standard of decent working conditions for domestic workers, set to take effect on September 2013.

In April, some of the J4DW members were also featured on Hidden Agenda at the House of Commons, an exhibition on modern day slavery organized by the Human Trafficking Foundation, and was opened by UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

“It helps us to rebuild our confidence so that we are able to speak out in public, and to do more campaigning and lobbying,” revealed Begonia.

“Arts has been very useful in terms of our campaign, like when we need to do our slogans. The work that we do is out there, and we use that as visual aids in all the public meetings, rallies, and some exhibitions. We also have loads of artwork that have come out in the media that we now use as a tool for campaigning.”

J4DW is fighting for protection, support, and decent working conditions on behalf of its members, many of whom have experienced abuse from their employers.

The group is also campaigning for better legal rights in the UK, particularly towards the government’s immigration policies in relation to the recent changes on domestic worker visas, which now restricts the ability of migrant workers to stay in the UK.

Becoming visible

Domestic workers across Europe are also getting involved in the arts to raise awareness of their causes, allowing insight into their lives as they navigate issues in employment and immigration.

In Denmark, documentary film “Au Pair” by Nicole N. Horanyi and Heidi Kim Andersen featured Filipinos working in private houses, giving a rare glimpse into their precarious living and working arrangements.

In the Netherlands, a group known as Domestic Workers Netherlands also participated in a shadow play video to encourage the Dutch government to ratify the ILO Convention 189, creatively expressing their thoughts and experiences.

An art project known as Werker Magazine, based in Amsterdam, is also exploring contemporary representations of domestic work through photography and design, which was also presented at Work Like This in Tate Modern.

Led by visual artist Marc Roig Blesa and graphic designer Rogier Delfos, the project collects pictorial records and textual anecdotes from workers around the world, as well hosting live art workshops to collectively discuss and form the project with the help of various groups and communities.

“This project is an attempt to generate from amateur photography practice, a representation of labour, of domestic work, that is horizontal. So we’re asking people from very different backgrounds to contribute, and to translate their experience of domestic work into images,” said Blesa, who has worked with J4DW as part of the project.

The materials are then curated and reworked to create a variety of published artwork, from postcards and calendars to books and web pages, providing a creative public platform for the often private world of domestic work.

Blesa explained: “I am very interested in a practice that empowers people. Because [domestic workers] are often working in very bad conditions, where they are isolated and treated as people who can do nothing good, I think these kinds of projects where we valorize their skills and their knowledge through photography, in this case, is I think very important.”

The artist also reveled their affinity to the plight of domestic workers, drawing a similarity between some of the struggles faced by young artists and other vulnerable labor groups.

“We think it’s very interesting to create bridges, and to approach and create links with other collectives that for other reason are also invisible, they are also in precarious living conditions. It’s not that we think that we are all the same, but we think that there are some aspects of their work that link with our practice as young artists. We are facing a lot of difficulty to be able to continue our practice, since it’s not making money in the beginning, only well-known artists who become really famous can live from that,” he said.

“But I don’t really see it as this kind of a charity. I really like to see my collaboration with domestic workers as people from different fields sharing knowledge and building. We learnt a lot from them also: how to self-organize, how to discuss things, how to fight for better working conditions, so it’s mutual.” –Patrick Camara Ropeta, ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau