And if the house was the institution

ESPAC, its collection and lines of work, are the starting point for reviewing the notions of the feminine and the domestic from a collaborative dialogue with people linked to academia, curatorship, cultural management, and artistic production. With What if the home was the institution, and what if the institution was the home we seek to problematize these categories, associated with the production of women, to think of them not as themes per se, but as policies present in the relationships, productions, work methodologies and structures within an institution, be it a museum, a school, a family or any established form of organization.

The term domestic, which refers to the home—therefore to the intimate and the less visible—also points to the action of domesticating: teaching to "coexist," to obey orders. In this sense, the feminine as the energy that reproduces and preserves life, has been constantly forced to "domesticate itself." However, in a relational sense, the domestic enables the construction of networks of affection, care, and shelter, as well as spaces for conspiring. In What if the home was the institution, and what if the institution was the home we do not think of the domestic restricted to the home and the feminine only associated with women, but as powers activated from and in people, initiatives, and ways of creating that confront practices of denigration and invisibilization.

The materials resulting from the collaborations are a collective exercise for the construction of an archive, both of the project and of the institution itself. Intimacy, conservation, and safekeeping present in the notion of an archive echo the categories of the domestic and the feminine. This archive will unfold as a publication and later as an exhibition; both articulate pieces from the ESPAC Collection, new commissions, and existing pieces.