MAYDAY

BOOK OF WOMEN by Tao Aimin

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BOOK OF WOMEN NO. 1 (2006)

Chinese calligraphy on used wooden washboards, jute cord
The artist has collected thousands of washboards over the years, recording the stories and faces of the rural women whose hands wore these boards down through the recursive repetition of monotonous labor. Each board is distinct. The patterns of wear on the boards over decades of daily use are testimonies to the passage of time, the passage of the lives spent, day in and day out serving hearth and home. For many of the women who used these boards, they are among the only records left of their lives. There are often no photographs, and without literacy, there can be no diaries or letters to attest to the lives of these women. Relegated to what Hannah Arendt followed ancient Greeks in calling the oikos — the household sphere of private, bodily necessity, which they contrasted with public life, thought, action and freedom — it might seem as if these women were as invisible as their life stories. Yet the material culture of manual labor has endured for millennia, and these washboards bear witness to the infinitesimal, and yet, profound and sustaining ways in which this mundane, quotidian labor that occupied most of their existences, inscribed their beings into the world.
BOOK OF WOMEN NO. 2 (2006)

Chinese calligraphy on used wooden washboards, jute cord

Return to table of contents for PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010

Filed Under: Art

Further Reading

To Dust We Return
by Darci Schummer

The only cure was lying on her back and looking up at the sky—losing herself in the drift of clouds during the day and the rise of stars at night. Sometimes she wondered if anyone could see her, if anyone was watching.

The Tomato by Mary Quade

A Retelling The forbidden—a tomato, arousing its vine. Sin abides in tendrils— no need for a snake, for the fork in a tongue. She takes her teeth to its skin. Knowledge isn’t crisp; it succumbs to her searching. No need for metaphor— all flesh and seed. Pomodori The ecstasy of green kindling to red— this […]

When You’re Dead
by Melissa Buckheit

When you’re dead you no longer have to think about the experiences of your childhood, get up morning after morning or cook meal upon meal until you no longer wish to eat. When you no longer wish to eat, you may be dead. I kept a collection of newspaper articles documenting airplane crashes in my […]

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