'Domestic Optimism' by Emma Wolf Haugh

Eileen Gray

As a whole Domestic Optimism focuses on the life and work of Irish-born self-taught modernist architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976) whose work is only recently enjoying visibility, however whose queerness – in life and her designs – was never quite recognized or understood.

Alternative to the patriarchal narrative

Emma Wolf-Haugh is interested in the choices that are made in omitting such aspects from a legacy, and through meticulous research, constellational storytelling, and a fair dose of irony, an alternative is offered here. Sculptures, large-scale vinyl prints, activist zines, textile screens and the remarkably enthusing film Domestic Optimism, Act One: Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story all come together to portray an alternative to the patriarchal narrative that has resounded so strongly since modernism self-proclaimed inception. Thereby revealing complex but also fascinating insights about identity politics, universality, fascism, individualism and collectivity at the time, as well as about the heirs of today.

Transformation

De Appel's brutal late modernist building in Nieuw-West is an exceptionally suitable location for such a project because its changing purpose – its architectural design, historic role as a school, current role as a anti-squat cultural hub, and future as beacon of a new city-center - make stark the precarity that comes with such processes. Making clear also how the values of private life, as well as the actual physical (re)development of urban reality, are determined and often deployed in relationship to architecture and city-planning. Both historically as well as now.