Make Me A Vessel: A Craft Based Exploration of Feminized Labour and Sustainability

This practice-led research study addresses the feminized body to unravel the oftentimes overlooked designation of sustainability as a feminine responsibility that positions the feminized body a vessel for the labour of load bearing. Through a series of creative craft explorations that places vessels (or bags) in dialogue with the feminine body, this work questions the feminization of labour and load bearing. It attempts to understand the relation between the feminine body, sustainability and the overarching patriarchal power structure which relegates them to the margins. Illuminating historically enforced gender binaries that shape mobility, exposing patriarchal power structures that are embedded in the act of carrying, and problematizing the designation of sustainability as a feminine responsibility as it is viewed a natural extension of femininity or domesticity, illuminates the issue of the relegation of corporate or institutional responsibility for sustainability to a private feminized realm.