the elusive housewife
“Hello. I am The Elusive Housewife. Diseases keep me at home
and limit my ability to create art. That is why I document my performance
of everyday life...“
Launched in 2022, although Yelena conceptualized it in 2021 and is wearing the Pantone colors of that year. This project reframes housekeeping as vital, though often unseen, labor. Conceptualized a year earlier as part of An Artist Residency in Motherhood, the project draws on disability studies and crip theory to illuminate how domestic work can serve as both a site of struggle and resilience for disabled individuals. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Yelena was fully disapproved for traditional employment, marking the start of an unexpected life as a housewife. Her diagnosis intersects with severe obsessive-compulsive hoarding, a condition she has managed since childhood, which complicates her daily routines and heightens her awareness of the space around her. Motherhood brought additional physical challenges: life-threatening pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia that led to the loss of her firstborn and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which resulted in ongoing, debilitating headaches. She also lives with essential thrombocytosis, a rare blood disorder that adds another layer of health management to her life. These experiences, rooted in both physical and mental health challenges, connect her work to crip theory’s reimagining of how bodies navigate spaces and systems that often fail to accommodate them. By framing housework through Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ idea of “maintenance work,” Yelena’s project underscores how domestic labor is invisible until it’s not done—a reality compounded by her disabilities, which magnify the overwhelming nature of housekeeping and childcare. Through her art, she confronts the undervaluation of this work, linking it to the feminist demand of wages for housework and urging a deeper appreciation for the constant, unseen labor that enables daily life. In doing so, Yelena’s project positions disability and the home as complex, intertwined spaces of labor, care, and often invisible struggle, where acts of survival and persistence are themselves forms of resistance.
