In Matterwork, I take my own demolition photographs and bring them into a space where they “don’t belong”. I print on materials tied to traditionally feminine spaces—fashion fabrics, aluminum foil, used teabags, crafting supplies — inserting what has been historically dismissed into a place of perceived power. At the same time, I integrate imagery of demolition, destruction, and industrial decay into these materials, placing the masculine within the feminine to examine the tensions between these worlds.

Matterwork examines the way labor is divided, recognized, and valued—how the work traditionally assigned to women is often dismissed as craft, while the same skills, when performed by men, are elevated to art, expertise, or industry. Men are seen as architects, engineers, and designers, while women are cooks, seamstresses, homemakers. Yet cooking is food science. Dyeing is chemistry. Making clothes requires engineering, geometry, and math. The difference is not in the skill required, but in how that skill is acknowledged.

This work challenges the way we code materials, labor, and imagery as masculine or feminine. By forcing these elements together, I question why certain kinds of work, spaces, and creations are gendered at all—and what happens when those boundaries begin to dissolve.