She works ?

intervention into museum of contemporary art ZAGREB
08.03.2025.

SHE WORKS ?
Matea Šabić Sabljić
Performative intervention
Museum of contemporary art, Zagreb

8 March 2025.

After the performative intervention “Does She Work?” presented on 08.03.2024 at Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik, I perform it again exactly one year later, on 08.03.2025, International Women’s Day, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

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I intervene in the Museum of Contemporary Art by cleaning the space in which, at that moment, the exhibition cycle “Too Late to Give Up” is on view. The exhibition offers a systematic overview of feminist performance through selected representative works of women artists who have defined and continue to define the Croatian performative scene, under the title “At the moment when a great war knocks at our door, it is necessary to think politically about this world.”

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With a broom from my own workshop, but also from home, I cleaned the exhibition space at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. I used the broom and cleaning water, into which I occasionally added a little black acrylic paint, and on drawing paper I wrote the word “WORK.” The very act of working was photo and video documented. Alongside the work I left the tools: the broom and the bucket with the cleaning water.

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This performative gesture was carried out on 8 March 2024 (Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik) and again in 2025 (MSU Zagreb) on International Women’s Day, a day that affirms the economic, political, and social achievements of women and advocates for full equality in all segments of society. I reflect on the position of women and women artists in a society where domestic, family, and artistic work are still often not perceived or valued as work.

I use the broom as a tool and medium whose function I once again invert; from a traditionally domestic “female” tool, I first transformed the broom into a boat in response to the provocation of a master craftsman who, out of all tools, handed me only a broom. Thus I built, and continue to build, an entire fleet of boats in honor of women who, despite prejudice and prohibitions, sailed the seas, built ships, and explored the maritime world. This time I again use the broom, transforming it into a brush, an artistic tool, with which I inscribe the word WORK.

The position of women artists is multiply invisible: domestic labor is attributed to women’s work, historically considered non‑work, socially invisible labor, which implies gender inequality. Analogously, artistic work can be considered “invisible work,” understood as a personal need or aspiration, and attributed to female identity. In this way, the position of women and women artists is simultaneously a space of value creation and economic exploitation. (Art is Woman – Josipa Bubaš)

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When women’s invisible domestic labor and women’s invisible artistic labor are multiplied by the invisibility of women throughout history, we arrive at a precarious social position. Through the artistic act I invert this, inscribing–drawing–underlining–working > work, posing and answering the rhetorical question: is domestic labor, is artistic labor, work or non‑work — in other words, does she work?

Matea Šabić Sabljić