The physical heft of fabrics and furniture. The bodily toll of housekeeping. The emotional burden of societal expectations. 

Artist Ruth Shafer explores these themes, by conflating the female form with furniture, finding literal shape in the intersection of gender, class, and domesticity. This work aims to examine the ways in which we comfortably undervalue domestic labor and the work of women’s bodies, from the unknown laundry woman to the unnamed nude model whose body helped make a male artist famous. For this exhibition, she created work that seeks to redress imbalances and omissions in the recorded histories of places of white privilege like Yester House, as well as examine the limited freedoms of women of nobility, like Gertrude Divine Webster.

By using secondhand and recycled fabrics and furniture, Shafer incorporates the material’s history into her work, allowing it to inform the finished product and deliberately engage the viewer. Notice when a particular pattern or form feels familiar to you. What memory or feeling of nostalgia does it elicit? These associations converge with Shafer’s interest in examining the dualities of domesticity—safety vs confinement, decoration vs identity, opportunity vs obligation. Situated within the former dressing room and bedroom of Gertrude Divine Webster, these sculptures investigate the structures of power that simultaneously define and conceal a woman’s body.