保持乾淨 KEEP IT CLEAN
DETAILS
Keep It Clean
Keep It Clean: Smells Like Summer
Keep It Clean: Orientalis
Oil Color, Screenprint, video installation (CRT monitor), single-channel video (color, sound), bottle brushes, printed tracing paper, Cleaning brush, flower buds, Cattail plants, Stainless steel draining basket
9 min
40 × 12 × 8 cm
70 × 30 × 30 cm
Dimensions variable
2026
NOTES
Exhibited at
2026 Tidy up, Tidy down, Yáo, Taichung, Taiwan.
Keep It Clean is an experiment in reconsidering cleaning as a technique for maintaining, as well as the various imaginaries that surround it. It begins with vintage cleaning product commercials displayed on a CRT television: smiling housewives, spotless floors, and cheerful music, reflecting the expectations placed upon women within a particular historical period. The sparkling visual effects layered over the advertisements merge with the white noise generated by analog television signals, creating a visual overlap between reality and illusion.
At the center of the installation is a floor of ceramic tiles produced through on-site screen printing. The printed patterns are derived from anti-slip textures with a pixelated quality. Because the ink requires an extended drying period, it continues to accumulate dust. Budding flowers attached to pink cleaning brushes gradually bloom, inspired by an animated sequence from a commercial in which flowers emerge from a freshly scrubbed floor.
Bottle brushes hang in organic formations, their forms suspended somewhere between tools and living organisms. Cattails placed in stainless-steel draining baskets serve as reference plants that participate in water purification within Taiwan’s wetland ecosystems. In the corridor outside the exhibition space, excerpts from Liao Yu-Hui’s essay On Cleaning, recount her encounters with different female domestic cleaners. For me, among moving images, plants, found tools, and text, cleaning is an ongoing everyday practice shaped by care, affection, and human relationships.
