THE PARTY OF THE LAVANDERA

Installation and participatory performance.
Carnations, clothes, rope, wooden clothespins, basin, soap, water.

Exhibition Brota El Pueblo, Corteconcepción, Huelva, Spain
30. June 2025

Curated by: Ana San Frutos and Hilde van Gorp

This work starts with a quick dive into the local nature, architecture of the village and witnessing one of the year’s local celebrations. As a Spaniard from Madrid living in Zurich, I observe the rituals with a semi-local yet foreign eye, with artistic curiosity. My ongoing artistic research explores rituals of togetherness. Here, I was especially inspired by the San Juan procession, the local culture and the village’s historic lavadero. The lavadero was once a vital social hub where generations of women—mothers, wives, grandmothers… neighbors—gathered to wash.

The act of washing clothes at the lavadero was a repetitive domestic ritual until the implantation of the washing machine in the 50s and 60s. The stream of water, filtered through the mountains, gathered in an architectural structure designed and built by men, for the use of women in the service of their families. It also became a space of female togetherness and temporary empowerment, despite the unpaid, expected labor. From the silence of their home or fields, women here were doing part of their hard, daily work in the company of other women. Though their contributions remain largely anonymous, these women nurtured each other. Metaphorically, washing was also a way to process pain, sorrow or hidden truths as collective experience—we say in Spanish that one puts out their “dirty clothes” when a hidden truth is revealed.

La Fiesta de la Lavandera thus celebrates the work and the collective empowerment of each anonymous lavandera. The project is presented as an installation and performance.

Photos: Ayuntamiento Corteconcepción