Handkerchief series

Cleaner (2023)

Dimensions variable. Digital prints.

Investigating the tension between care and destruction, Cleaner is a series of photographs that documents the destruction of a delicate handkerchief. Using a variety of laundry products, Stevens repeatedly washed the moldy piece of cloth until the material disintegrated.​

During 2023, Stevens undertook a series of works that utilised a collection of delicate but moldy handkerchiefs, recovered from a house assigned for demolition. Informed by associations with common materials used in early feminist art, Stevens plays with an ironic symbolism between these handkerchiefs and feminine bodies.​

Unpacking ideas of perceived damage and obsolescence, the need for perfection, alongside personal obsessive rituals, Stevens used this exaggerated cleaning method to question the worth of these material bodies before, during, and after this caring-turned-destructive process.​