Making the Invisible Visible: Indoor Heat, Unpaid Domestic Work, and Women’s Resilience

Extreme heat is often measured on streets and in fields. But some of its harshest effects are felt indoors, where women shoulder the invisible weight of unpaid domestic work. Cooking in unventilated kitchens, managing households under tin roofs, or enduring nights in airless rooms, these daily realities rarely enter policy or public discourse.

This installation turns those hidden burdens into a shared experience. Using thermal imagery, testimonies, and everyday sounds, it makes visible what is usually unseen: the relentless heat of kitchens, the compromises women make to keep flames steady, the small hacks that bring fleeting relief, and the resilience that underpins care work.

Visitors encounter more than data. They walk alongside stories that reveal how design, climate, and gendered spaces intersect, often at the cost of women’s health and dignity. The takeaway is both intimate and systemic: to recognize heat not just as an outdoor crisis, but as an indoor inequity that shapes survival itself.