My mom knows what I'm doing

A permanent marker. A t-shirt. The handwritten text: “It burns them up to see a badass woman occupying space however she pleases.”

The garment is not an accessory; it is the performance. The text communicates before the artist opens her mouth, occupies the space before she enters a room, provokes without her having to do anything. Whoever approaches to question it becomes, involuntarily, part of the piece.

On one occasion, someone approached the artist confrontationally to question the text. The artist responded: “So you agree with me, if it burns you up?”

Other women approached to ask where she had bought the t-shirt. The artist always gave the same answer: that she had made it herself, and that they could make their own too. In that exchange, the political object became a communal instrument: reproducible, accessible, and for everyone.

Following Rita Laura Segato's (2016) arguments, the disciplining of feminine language has historically functioned as a control mechanism intended to preserve a social order that depends on the subordination of women. Refined language is not simply a matter of etiquette; it is a regulatory device. The artist takes what has historically been used to label women as "ill-mannered" and prints it on a handmade t-shirt. In this reinterpretation, the forbidden becomes her own territory.

The artist comments:

"I was well-educated at home. My choice of vulgarity doesn't stem from it being the only thing I know; it comes from a conscious decision, a political act: to claim space in my own way. Words are also political territory, and I decide how I inhabit them."

Bibliography:
Segato, R. L. (2016). The War Against Women. Traficantes de Sueños.