Laundry/Ecstasy is an installation and eight-hour performance inspired by Clare of Assisi, patron saint of laundry. In the former wash house of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington DC I ironed linens belonging to five generations of women in my family, repeatedly pressing and folding hand-embroidered cloth for the length of a workday. Beginning at dawn, I took one 30-minute and two 15-minute breaks.

The full-length video documents the passing of time in a patch of sunlight moving across the wall and the hourly tolling of church bells. Viewers are invited to see but not enter this cloistered space, to witness physical movements and metaphysical labors that gesture toward the sacred by attending closely to the materiality of daily life.