Carmie Baxter
The Great Barrow
Artist Statement
There are many things in the world which we convince ourselves are truth. I am certain that some of the most dangerous fallacies of all have to do with liberation and equality of womxn. The lies which we tell one another, womxn to womxn, grandmother to mother, mother to child, whole damn world to girlchild, are so deeply sown that the roots have only grown deeper the more we have become aware of them existing. An idea of girlhood is sold to us. For me, it looks like raising a child alone even when coupled. It looked like being the wife who had to get a restraining order. It looks like going to the grocery store and always cooking dinner while the men, at home for the holiday, watched us like we enjoyed the work of it all. All along, as the great barrow, we were happy to carry. I could have been pulling whole trees from underneath my nails before a one of them would bother getting off their ass for their own drink. It looks like entitlement to touch, it looks like entitlement to assume and take, and it looks like shoving gratitude down our throat so far that we even speak it off of our own tongues.
The womxn I have most loved in my life were incredible artists, writers, builders, community leaders, and nearly all of them had the life sucked out of them at least once by what has always been told was work to be done solely because of their womxness. Life sucked so they could carry the weight that had been decided for them to carry. My sister wanted to play basketball, my mother wanted to just be free, and my grandmother never made it out alive but she got pretty close when she finally listened to her daughters and left her piece of shit husband.
In America, we have become so comfortable with these illusions that we really believe the greatest battles of equality have already been fought and won for womxn. When we speak the truth for ourselves, most of the country still elects them for presidency. We are governed even when we live the lives we want. We are governed even when we yell we are free.
I still live in a patriarchy. There is madness in most of it, how couldn’t there be?
Some days I long to paint but know rather that I must finish the cooking and the laundry in my home. Guilt can be generational, I certainly believe it has been passed to me.
The arrangement and upkeep of objects, images, and materials found within the home is not exclusive to human existence, but it has largely been unevenly distributed to its inhabitants who are womxn. This arrangement is much more than collection! We are taught to do it so well when we play with a dollhouse--when my mother taught me how to wear lipstick. This art speaks to the series of tasks shouldered by myself and the womxn who I have grown up around. The term “invisible labor” is often employed in reference to these tasks which keep a household running and the inhabitants who live in it fed, clean, and comfortable. The clinking of dishes, the fluffing of pillows, the laundering of everyone’s clothes, the magical way the groceries appear on the shelves at home,
the way I ignore the bosses who stood too close because I really needed to keep my job.
the way my partner told me the wage gap existed because womxn were not seeking physical jobs.
I am tired of this shit. It’s bittersweet that this art, which is intended for installation has been finished in the space of the home I live. I had to clean my house just to have room to work on finishing it. I rearranged the pieces of the dollhouse about a million times, washed the windows and walls. Thank goodness the girls do their own laundry.