The Handmaid’s Guide

2024. For On Objects class.

This work is an amalgamation of gendered experiences conveyed through my experience of coming from a working class family. Encapsulated in the book titled The Basic Handyman’s Guide, an interactive piece of the sculpture, you find collaging of images that are in conversation with the objectification, infantilization, and degradation of women. A rather male-centric view of women. Not only does this serve as commentary on the patriarchy, but also speaks to my own parents’ dynamic of a working man and a “domestic” woman. Additionally, this is a means of exploring my own experience with gender identity and how society has shaped how I view myself. Strewn across the ladder are doll clothes, accompanied by surrounding tools and hardware–repeating the collaging of soft and hard in the book. The string wrapped around the ladder represents the restrictive nature of femininity. The shovel, along with the boots, represents a masculine figure, placed in the center of it all, representing the way men, or more masculine figures, impose on women, or feminine figures.