Moira Zoitl, Theresa's Room

Projekt EXCHANGE SQUARE 2002 > 2009

"Not only functions of space are exchanged.
‘Exchange’ itself becomes the function of the space."
Renate Wöhrer

In the middle of the renowned financial and shopping district of Hong Kong lies Exchange Square. The name underlines not only the exchange of monetary value but also the people’s mobility: each Sunday, tens of thousands of female domestic workers from South and Southeast Asia reclaim the public space, here and in the surrounding streets and squares.
The artist Moira Zoitl has concerned herself with these women’s living and working conditions and with their everyday life and activism. EXCHANGE SQUARE presents artistic and collaborative projects, complemented by analytical texts and interviews about the forms of and the reasons for globalized job migration.

Theresa’s Room
The installation Theresa’s Room consists of the life-sized reconstruction of the room of Maria Theresa Hamto, a Philippine domestic worker for a Chinese family in the New Territores, an outer district of Hong Kong. The embroidered bed covering, The Maid’s Rulebook lists some of the rules of behaviour for “housemaids,” fixed in their work contracts.
The video Maria Theresa Hamto Performing Babae/Women and Newsletter/01 with the title Street Actions (2005) document the political and social activities of migrants on the street, while the video Maria Theresa Hamto at Work shows the rigid daily routine of a domestic worker.