Care Work as Art Work: Polvo de Gallina Negra in the Context of the Feminist Movement in 1980s Mexico-City

Abstract

This article discusses the artistic practice of Polvo de Gallina Negra, Mexico’s first feminist art collective, which was closely related to the women’s movement in the 1980s. I focus on their gesture of defining maternal work as prerequisite for their artistic work, a strategic move that criticizes the underlying distinctions between private and public, productive and reproductive, thereby introducing new strategies and techniques into the realm of art. Through denaturalizing care work in their performance Madre por un día (Mother for a day) (1987) they articulate a critique of the underlying paradigms of art and labor. Furthermore, their practice poses questions concerning an art historical preoccupation with political movements and activist art and, as I argue, demands a methodological expansion within the discipline.