MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission
Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao is the inaugural MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission recipient. The new National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) initiative is a major five-year program designed to support five international female designers or architects, one each year, to create a significant work for the NGV Collection.
Bilbao is regarded as one of Mexico’s leading architects. She founded Tatiana Bilbao Estudio in Mexico City in 2004 with the aim of producing architectural design work from a position of social and ecological responsibility. Her work challenges historical conventions, often rearticulating spaces to make them more people-orientated and inclusive. “I am deeply honoured and grateful to have been chosen for the Women in Design Commission by the NGV and MECCA. The Commission is contributing, in many ways, to advance the discourse of the importance of opening channels for people who have been left out of opportunities,” she says.
Bilbao will unveil La ropa sucia se lava en casa (Dirty clothes are washed at home), 2022, a large-scale installation exploring the concept of clothing as a symbol of protection for the body, and the associated practices of domestic labour, gender, and community, at NGV International on 6 October, where the commission will be on display until 29 January 2023.
The installation is accompanied by a series of wall drawings, which depict communal laundries and washhouses from around the world and throughout history, creating a collective memory of the diverse social interactions that laundry spaces have
