Project funded by the Festival Nosaltres Grant in collaboration with the Fundació Iluro. Premiered on August 14, 2025, within the framework of Nosaltres Festival in the gardens of l’Antic Escorxador, Mataró.
Imperio: Legacy of the Invisibles is an artistic research project that places at its center the voices of the women who worked in the textile industry in Catalonia. Through interviews and the analysis of historical documents, the project reconstructs the working conditions of these women and connects them with current dynamics of precariousness and exploitation.
The research is based on the premise that the memory of Catalan industrialization has been built from a hegemonic patriarchal narrative that has systematically silenced the role of women. This partial perspective also obscures how gender—and, in many cases, migrant status—placed these workers in positions of greater labor vulnerability
Building on this premise, the research poses a series of questions intended to spark reflection and challenge historical structures: In what ways has motherhood been used as a tool of social control in the workplace? How does migration impact the precarization and vulnerability of women workers? What effects does motherhood have on women’s access to job opportunities and professional advancement? How can these historical structures be dismantled and, from the artistic field, new forms of resistance and vindication be imagined?
