Abstract
This article analyses textiles as living materials endowed with their own agency. In addition to the emotions and memories they evoke, textiles are imbued with vitality. When they occupy an intimate and private space, such as a home, they act as a kind of soft architecture, absorbing the words, gestures, smells, memories and relationships that emerge within that environment. Steeped in everyday aesthetics and imbued with feminine care, these materials face a society with clear and visible power structures as they cross the threshold into the public sphere. This is accentuated when these textiles cover a body, revealing social hierarchies and gender distinctions. The research takes the apron worn by domestic workers in Santiago de Chile as its case study, serving as a starting point for critical reflection on how the vitality of the object transcends the space it inhabits and envelops the body with a distinct agency.
Keywords
Textile agency; Domestic work; Affective materiality; Gender.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1064
Citation
Rios Erazo, C.A. (2026) Affective materialities and textile Agency: The apron as a device of gender and class, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1064
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Affective materialities and textile Agency: The apron as a device of gender and class
This article analyses textiles as living materials endowed with their own agency. In addition to the emotions and memories they evoke, textiles are imbued with vitality. When they occupy an intimate and private space, such as a home, they act as a kind of soft architecture, absorbing the words, gestures, smells, memories and relationships that emerge within that environment. Steeped in everyday aesthetics and imbued with feminine care, these materials face a society with clear and visible power structures as they cross the threshold into the public sphere. This is accentuated when these textiles cover a body, revealing social hierarchies and gender distinctions. The research takes the apron worn by domestic workers in Santiago de Chile as its case study, serving as a starting point for critical reflection on how the vitality of the object transcends the space it inhabits and envelops the body with a distinct agency.