Circus of Everyday Life

Everyday life can be hectic. Priorities build up and assort themselves amongst the list fighting for the top. From the day job, friends, and family, the order of importance can become blurred and we find ourselves misplacing more than our house keys. Daily chores are a constant variable to add to this equation of everyday life. The home is a personal area of absolute relaxation, a place to decompress and rest your feet at the end of a long day. Although the domestic home should be the escape from hectic daytime life, it also has its own list of duties and maintenance. The home can act like a domesticated prison when chores and to-do lists and dust bunnies build up. Outside life and priorities can get in the way of maintaining upkeep on the home front.

“The Circus of Everyday Life” is an ongoing collaboration work combining the efforts of photographic artist Joanna Katchutas and make-up artist/sculptor Christina Spina, depicting how everyday life can be a circus. A circus can be defined as “A traveling company of performers in a series of different places causing a public scene of frenetic and noisily intrusive activity”. Representative of the fact that sometimes we feel the world is crazy like a circus and like we’re the performers going through an everyday routine, the photographs portray very elaborate circus characters dressed in character however instead in performing in a circus related role, they are involved in the act of a chore. The Characters are dressed the part but are out of character- consumed in a routine role (ex: a mime waiting for the bus).

The unique editing process depicts the scenes to appear dull and drab yet the characters to be full of colour and highly saturated relating to the fact that even the most unusual and strange have the same household chores to go home to. Regardless of the amount of times chores are tended to, it is a constant cycle, and demand attention. From vacuuming to cooking, gardening to laundry, it’s a full cycle of activity that has to be done everyday for the rest of your life, because it is a big part of your life. It’s mundane, droning and often aggravating.