top of page
Domestic Fetish
June 2025
No Collections Here
Sort your projects into collections. Click on "Manage Collections" to get started
Esther Birch, Terrace
"I went twice! It really spoke to me as a feminist."
Barbara Riley, Victoria BC
"This exhibit should travel the country!!! The world !!!"
Joan Tureki, Terrace
"Such a powerful relevant story told with empathy and humour. go see it during June!"
Catherine Hart Art
Paintings and Found Art Objects
I am an artist living in Northern British Columbia who is inspired by everyday injustices. l create art that affects people emotionally using appealing found objects, colour and humor. My goal is always to illicit a tear or a gut punch reaction from the viewer.
Domestic Fetish 2025
This exhibit explores how patriarchal expectations of female labour have shaped the lives of women through generations. I wanted to expose the hypocricy of the 'Trad Wife' aesthetic gaining popularity at a time when women's right are being clawed back around the world.
Obedient
A vintage dressmaker's dummy represents the traditional role of women within the patriarchy.
Her arms and hands, fashioned from whisks, hold a vacuum hose poised to tidy up fabric pieces embroidered with the rights women have fought for- equal pay, abortion rights, rape laws, and anti-discrimination protections.
The headless figure suggests the loss of autonomy the "trade wife"experiences.
Buttons cover the vacuum, symbolizing generations of domestic labour performed by women that has remained largely unpaid and unacknowledged.
Carrots from Saskia's Garden
The paintings in this exhibit represent the curated social media posts of a trad wife attempting to achieve the ideal struggles to achieve the expectations of a the patriarchal ideal of a stay at home wife. These carrots while bountiful, fall short of the ideal. They are placed in a plastic colander rather than a metal one, and a weed is caught in the harvest . Subtle details that do not measure up to the unrealistic standards of the trad wife aesthetic.
Gutted
This fish, eviserated and ready to bake is symbolic of how women in traditional roles are stripped of their autonomy and must serve others.
Behave
The birthday cake represents the countless hours women have spent preparing for family events and celebrations. From a young age, they are taught that caring for the emotional needs of others is their duty.
Women who refuse to behave this way are a danger to the patriarchy, they are silenced and punished.
Short Changed
Candies from your mom or grandmother's purse may seem like a treat, but on closer inspection the viewer discovers something unsettling. The sweets carry labels such as chattel, slave, and baby machine, revealing the hidden expectations placed on women. What first appears nostalgic and comforting becomes a reflection on how traditional roles can be a trap.
Devolution
In this piece, the trad wife has cut fabric from the uniforms on the clothes line to fashion an apron.
This act suggests a reversal of progress, symbolizing how the glorification of the trade wife ideal undermines the strides that have been made toward equal rights in the workplace.
Retirement Dinner
The meal on the china plate is made entirely of buttons. After sacrificing their earning years to raise a family, many traditional wives are left financially vulnerable later in life and must live in poverty. The "pension" for their labour often amounts to little more than a jar of buttons saved from years of mending clothes and a set of china passed down through generations of women-symbols of devotion, duty, and economic invisibility.
Recipes For Disaster
Carved into the rolling pin are the words Recipes for Disaster. A smashed recipe tin spills out familiar dishes-matrimonial squares, wedding soup, engagement chicken-recipes traditionally passed down through generations of women. Here, they become a commentary on the messages inherited along side them: that a woman's purpose is to serve. In this piece, the recipes are rewritten as darkly sarcastic versions of the originals.
Hot Line
Visitors are invited to lift the handset of the black vintage telephone mounted on the wall and covered with buttons. When the receiver is raised, a blood-curdling scream fills the line-an expression of the collective rage women feel upon realizing how the patriarchy has duped them into sacrificing their autonomy.
Marriage
The cars in this piece are packed in tightly , making an escape impossible. Without laws protecting women and providing child support, many women are trapped in marriages with no way out.
Tub Talk
It is at this point in the exhibition that the trad wife steals a moment to be alone with her thoughts while taking a bath. For many mothers raising families, bathing is one of the few private moments available to them-a brief pause in a life structured around caring for others.
Dutch Oven
This painting depicts the daily drudgery of a trad wife.
Her reflection is visible on the lid of the Dutch oven in the sink. The image invites the viewer to consider her inner life: when she catches her reflection in the shiny lid, does she feel trapped?
Dick's
Buttons appear throughout this exhibition as symbols of the unpaid and unseen labour performed by generations of women. Within the structures of patriarchy, many women reach old age with little financial security after a lifetime spent caring for families. What remains is often symbolic rather than economic: a jar of buttons gathered from years of mending clothes-evidence of devotion, duty, and labour that went unrecognized. A poor substitute for the security of a pension.
Unmade Bed
Here we get a peek into the psych of the trad wife. Asshe begins to struggle with the expectations placed upon her. The unmade bed signals a quiet rupture in the trad wife aesthetic. In this moment of disorder, the first signs of her rebellion and awakening begin to emerge.
Laundry on the Line
This painting depicts an idyllic domestic scene; laundry hanging on a line on a sunny day. Yet closer inspection reveals small failures. The scene does not live up to the trad wife aesthetic.
The grass is unkept, the socks are dingy and the garden is subpar. The work reflects the impossibility of the standards of homemaking promoted by the trad wife aesthetic.
Whoopsie
This painting shows the trad wife beginning to fracture under the weight of expectations placed upon her. the cracked egg on the counter symbolizes both wasted potential and the loss of innocence. As the shell breaks, the illusion of the perfect domestic life begins to farcture, revealling the damage the patriarchy.
Laundry Basket
An overflowing laundry basket sits in a room where a window opens onto a bright sunny day. The contrast between the interior and the outside world highlights the confinement and isolation of a traditional subservient role, where domestic duties keep women tethered to the home while life continues beyond its walls.
Wrapped
Once again, the trad wife falls short of the ideal. She has gathered huckleberries, but instead of carefully preserving them in in decorative jars, she stores them in plastic bags to freeze. The bags evoke a sense of suffocation, symbolizing how women may feel when their autonomy is restricted by patriarchal traditions.
Radishes with Salt
this still life shows a simple dish with radishes and a bowl of salt . It reflects how the daily task of feeding a family are acts of love . The salt, however, represents bitterness-the realization that a man in a traditional patriarchal marriage feels entitled to this act.
Kiwis and Lemons
The kiwis and lemons placed in the egg carton feel out of place. their presence suggests displacement. In a way, some women who find themselves confined to a traditional role may experience a sense of disconnection, that their lives lack the fullfillment that autonomy can provide.
Bird Cage
In a bird cage made from whisks and a tart pan sits a ceramic bird pepper shaker with buttons scattered across the bottom of the cage as litter. The caged bird is a classic symbol of loss of autonomy. Here, the buttons represent the unpaid and under valued labour , suggesting how little the patriarchy values the domestic work of women.
Coming January 2027
Toys for the Tender-Hearted
A series of of found object sculptures using vintage toys to examine how patriarchy shapes boys -teaching them to supress 'feminine' expressions. What first appears playful and nostalgic, reveals a darker story about how patriarshy can wound men as much as it privilidges them.
bottom of page