Talía Falcón Nizarane
Cleaning Service
I mopped the floor at ten different locations in the city of Zurich, where I temporarily live. The cleaning took place for uninterrupted periods, ranging from 30 minutes to 1.5h. Before starting, I marked a 1x1m square on the floor around me, inside of which the cleaning would take place. While performing, I did not leave the interior of the square at any moment and remained focused on the action despite interruptions.
These performance series reflect on the political boundaries that limit us as individuals and force a particular outcome for a social scenario, building up adverse realities and poor living conditions for the people within.
Coming from an island and feeling often trapped and disconnected from the outside world, made me look at the water as a prison placed there by Nature itself to hold me back.
The act of controlling and giving shape to this water empowers me as an individual and turns my action into a ritual. A lot can be said about the connotations of the act of cleaning: It is physical, manual labor related to the social class of an individual. Who cleans? Who does not clean? Women clean, poor people also clean...