I'm in This World, Doing

Through mixed-media works, Vivian Smith draws on personal experience to make visible the labour that takes place outside the formal workforce.

I'm in This World, Doing, explores how unpaid labour—care work, domestic tasks, and emotional labour—remains largely unseen and undervalued, despite its essential role in supporting families, communities, and the broader Canadian economy. Through mixed-media works, Vivian Smith (BFA '23, Drawing) draws on personal experience to make visible the labour that takes place outside the formal workforce.

Drawing on the body and daily routines as source material, Vivian Smith creates photographs printed on domestic textiles such as silk, satin, and chiffon. These images are preserved with beeswax, referencing the steady productivity of female worker bees and the gendered expectations associated with care and household labour. Hand-stitching, quilting, and sewing shape the work, grounding it in traditions of domestic making and daily life.

I'm in This World, Doing asks viewers to reconsider how we value unpaid work in a market-driven economy and highlights the tension between paid and unpaid work. By placing images of unseen work in objects that circulate in the art market, the works call for greater recognition of unpaid labour, shed light on gender inequality, and spark conversations about policies like Universal Basic Income.

Vivian Smith is an emerging artist who comes from a long line of women who could fold fitted sheets perfectly while simultaneously revising schedules, planning dinner, and carrying on a conversation. She spent years balancing a career in engineering with the demands of household management. Recognizing the toll of this dual role, she transitioned to creating art that challenges societal perceptions of labour. Now, she creates art that transforms evidence of her own unpaid routines into objects that question why we value the chair but not the labour that keeps it clean.