Abstract Book of the 7th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2025
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Glosa for Julia Margarita: Archiving the Intersection Between Domestic Work, Care, and Visual Memory
Rosana Monteverde Valle
ABSTRACT:
This research analyzes, through archival practice, the complexity of the relationship woven between domestic and care workers and their employing families. The motivation for the project stems from the artist’s bond with Julia Vargas, a woman from Cusco, Peru, who worked as a domestic employee for her Lima-based family for over 65 years. The first part of this paper reviews historical and theoretical sources focused on Lima, contextualizing the invisibilization, devaluation, and discrimination experienced by domestic workers as a result of structural machismo, racism, and classism since the 19th century. It also examines the visual representation of care workers in family photo albums, treating photography as a visual device capable of revealing social ideology. The second part narrates Julia’s life story, delving into the quasi-familial bond between the author and her caregiver, and explores—through personal testimony—the complex dynamic of affection and oppression within the domestic labor relationship. This part also proposes the creation of the Julia Margarita Vargas Salas Archive (1930–2015) to recover visual evidence of Julia’s life through documents, photographs, notes, and family albums. The last part describes how the project brings the Archive to the public via an interactive website that enables navigation through a glossary of hashtags. Glosa for Julia Margarita offers a microhistorical contribution and, through the lens of fragmentation, opens a critical space to reflect on Julia’s historicity while addressing the tensions between care and control in domestic labor in contemporary Peru.
Keywords: care economy; archive; domestic labor; hashtag; testimony