Agreement of Domestic Employment for Female Immigrant Workers in New York, Contract, 2015
Commissioned by Old Stone House of Brooklyn for the exhibition, In Search of One City: Sensing (In)equality
Curated by Katherine Gressel
Agreement of Domestic Employment for Female Immigrant Workers in New York is a speculative contract developed in collaboration with workers with precarious immigration status, exploring how informal and affective labor can be acknowledged without relying on legal frameworks. Centered around the act of trust, the contract imagines alternative ways of documenting care work in domestic settings—work often rendered invisible by both policy and culture.
The term Employee is typographically struck through, emphasizing the instability and erasure of immigrant women’s labor within the U.S. economy. The contract becomes both a record and a visual gesture: a way to mark the presence of those excluded from legal recognition, and to suggest a language for dignity beyond documentation.
This work laid the groundwork for my ongoing inquiry into gendered labor, embodied precarity, and the politics of care—expanded in later projects such as Politics of Touch.
This original agreement was developed through a collaboration between the artist and Alison and Pauline, and advised or reviewed by Michele Gover, Esq; Ann Marie Puente, Esq.; Shevaun Wright, Esq.; Chan Kim, J.D.
