Authors
Shannon Egan, Director of Schmucker Art Gallery
Files
Download Full Text (1001 KB)
Document Type
Art Catalog
Description
Zoë Charlton’s grandmother, Everlena Bates, was a domestic worker in Northern Florida. Charlton pays homage not only to her grandmother in her recent body of work, but also to the long history of African-American women’s labor in white families’ homes throughout the South. Although her grandmother did not speak often or directly about the conditions of her employment, Charlton nonetheless is keenly aware of the injustices, possible abuses, and intimate labor endured by black maids, housekeepers, and nannies who worked endlessly long hours and with little pay through the twentieth century. The collages and large-scale installation in Charlton’s exhibition The Domestic at Schmucker Art Gallery examine the notions of caretaking across racial and class lines, the fragility and failings of a home, and the complications of gender and sexuality in relation to this intensely bodily domestic work.
Publication Date
Spring 2019
Publisher
Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
City
Gettysburg, PA
Keywords
Gettysburg College, African American, Women, Gender and Sexuality, Domestic Work
Recommended Citation
Egan, Shannon, "Zoë Charlton: The Domestic" (2019). Schmucker Art Catalogs. 31.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/31
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Book and Paper Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons
Comments
The Domestic was on exhibition at the Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College January 25th - March 8th, 2019.