Marianna Janowicz: 1001 Drying Rooms

Drying clothes is an integral part of domestic life and, as Marianna Janowicz explores in 1001 Drying Rooms, it can tell us a lot about how we live.

In London, hanging laundry outside is frequently banned by housing providers in order to preserve the appearance of a building. Yet residents are often also discouraged from drying inside, to prevent the build-up of moisture and dangerous mould in small, poorly ventilated homes. Where should we dry our laundry?

Marianna’s research aims to understand how methods and places for cleaning our clothes have changed over time: from communal facilities to islands of domesticity. In this display, Marianna presents artefacts from London’s lesser-known laundry histories and a crowd-sourced survey of domestic habits, to argue against private solutions to public problems. The assemblage at the centre of her section depicts an impossible tangle of mechanical, carbon-intensive ‘solutions’ to drying laundry, prompting us to ask what communal resources might be needed for healthier, fairer futures.