Self Maid is an observational study exploring imbalanced power structures and divisions of labour through diasporic perspectives and using maintenance as a political act.
A project set in Covent Garden
The people that make up the maintenance sector of the city are commonly deemed invisible. These people that care for us and our city are rarely treated with the same care they provide.
Dignified Rest
This project resulted in the creation of a co-designed, dignified and transient rest area for the maids of The Strand Palace hotel.
The Backstreets of The Strand Palace Hotel
On a journey between sites I came across a site in Covent Garden’s backstreets, lined with maids in purple. I felt this site accurately represented the issues I wanted to analyse.
I spoke to a quite few of these women and made book of field notes. Some conversations were nice, but some of them were more standoffish, a few of them told me to go talk to the men, “they’ll know”, “because we’re just the cleaners.” This gave me a reality check of the power dynamics set and in seeing that some of these women didn’t want to talk. This was a way of telling in itself. So I wanted to figure out more respectful ways of telling and recording, I started to draw them and actually learnt a lot from drawing them. You start to see the smaller details like the odd button that had been sewed back onto their uniforms.
A lot of maintenance workers are immigrants; people who are mostly made to feel they don’t belong. Shortly after these conversations we had while sat on the street floor I began to clean this very spot. I wanted to look at ways we can reclaim space through performance, using maintenance as a political act.
After sitting with the ladies and listening to their needs we proceeded to design a more dignified rest area.
A transient rest area made using leftover wood sourced from around London
Finally… a place to sit.
After creating the rest area I walked to the site and set the area up, demonstrating how to easily assemble and disassemble the bench and left the bench there for the maids to use and take whenever they wanted. This project most definitely demonstrated a need for more dignified rest areas and simply more care for those who care for our cities.
The Economics of Immigration
I then grounded my project by understanding the reality and reasoning behind these imbalances, why are they treated so poorly? And of course, it had to do with money. I calculated how much it costs for a maid to clean 1m2 of a hotel room per cleaning. The result was 60p.
In order to start mapping what this all means on a larger scale, economically, culturally, spatially etc. I created a series of layered illustrations for each of the components of the manifesto, attaching each action with a site, where exactly they would be in London’s boroughs and how they relate to the grand scheme of diasporic community groups, safe spaces for immigrants, and political imbalances they emigrate from. And then we start looking at where these maids live and which boroughs contain the largest populations of diasporic communities and the exchange rates for those countries they come from.
It all comes back to the 60p, I looked at how this translates to the people who receive it. They often send most of the money made back to their home countries and families. So what is 60p worth to you and what is 60p worth to them?
Many people immigrate to England for “opportunity”, but I suppose it’s difficult to see this as an opportunity when we can see how they are treated as less than, however here, when we convert worth, we can understand the opportunity in their eyes. As well as how people see this concept of worth as an economic opportunity to exploit.
A large scale hand drawing
A research map exploring the spatial journey of a migrant in London, more specifically, my mothers in the 80’s. This was incredibly helpful in understanding where immigrant women felt safe and where they felt threatened – the work place was a particularly hostile environment for her, as it is for many others.