Artwork information

Camera 117, Camera 109, and Leafa, OCS Cleaner are CCTV recordings of live performances at Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, highlighting the invisibility of cleaners—an essential yet undervalued workforce.

In these performances, Leafā Wilson aka Olga Krause temporarily steps away from her role as Curator of Art, adopting the role of a cleaner in the museum’s public spaces. Dressed in the uniform of Outsourced Client Solutions (OCS), she performs simple cleaning tasks during opening hours. However, as captured in the CCTV footage, her actions go unnoticed by visitors, reflecting the systemic invisibility of cleaners.

For Krause, these performances challenge the stigma of cleaning as menial work. She explains:

The cleaners for me ARE me. They represent a part of me that is probably the most important, that they are more like me than I am like the institution… I have a running joke with an artist friend who frequently asks me how my cleaning job is going at the museum… subverting the text each time we joke about it is part of the fun and the ‘triumph’ of overturning power structures… if only as a humble cleaner. 1

1 Leafa Wilson. Email Communication with the Curator.