Air Out Your Dirty Laundry Exhibit by Pia Camil at Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is always surprising its visitors with public art exhibits, such as the Air Out Your Dirty Laundry Exhibit by Pia Camil in May 2022. For this exhibit, Rockefeller Center’s 193 flagpoles were transformed into a giant clothesline for laundry featuring 700 pieces of clothing suspended overhead at the iconic plaza. It was very disconcerting to walk to the skating rink and just see laundry flapping around, though it was very much in keeping with the exhibit titled Saca Tus Trapos Al Sol (Air Out Your Dirty Laundry), 2022.
As a multi strand community clothesline that has secondhand clothing from residents of Mexico City, it created a familiar and shared global experience that is familiar to everyone in the heart of New York City at Rockefeller Center, and representing the idea of airing one’s dirty laundry in public.
Saca Tus Trapos Al Sol (Air Out Your Dirty Laundry) Exhibit
“Saca Tus Trapos Al Sol (Air Out Your Dirty Laundry),” is a community clothesline that was exhibited at Rockefeller Center in New York City in 2022. The installation featured hundreds of pieces of clothing hung on clotheslines strung between the flagpoles surrounding the Rockefeller Center ice rink. The clothing was donated by members of the public representing a diverse range of styles and cultures aimed at celebrating the beauty of everyday objects and challenging traditional notions of what is considered valuable or desirable.
As the description states – meant as a collective portrait, the installation bears witness to the artist’s belief that communities are based on personal relations and stories, rather than borders and nationalistic values.
Here is what it was like to walk through the exhibit –
The Air Out Your Dirty Laundry Exhibit uses laundry, which is a chore done by households globally, to create a collective memory of the community and its people. The installation encourages visitors to reflect on their own memories and relationships associated with laundry, and is a unique and thought-provoking installation that challenges traditional forms of representation and explores themes of community, identity, and personal relations through the use of laundry.
