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Jobb eller Fritid?

Curatorial Statement:

​Gitte Sætre creates drawings that question how we calculate value in society. What if all the invisible care work - childcare and upbringing, housework and cooking - were counted in GDP?  She use red and blue markers on A3 sheets to show the tension between what we call "work" and what we call "leisure". A visual exploration of GDP, care work and gender equality in a time of technological and climate change

Sætre picks up pen and paper to capture a paradox: the more we talk about equality, the more invisible the labor that sustains society becomes.
​Her red and blue drawings serve as a ledger of everything that slips through the cracks of GDP calculations—unpaid, undervalued, yet essential.

Where the Norwegian painter Harriet Backer once painted women’s quiet repose in lamplight, Sætre sketches their frantic motion in the glow of screens. Backer’s 19th-century scenes of concentrated stillness have undergone a metamorphosis over 130 years. Today’s woman is a producer—a role tied to criteria of oversight and precision, yet still layered with the invisible demands of caregiving, relational labor, and creativity. The question persists: Why does care not count as work? It’s a thread stretching back to Backer’s 1890s paintings, which dared to frame women’s domesticity as inherently valuable. Our mothers’ unpaid hours still don’t appear in GDP. When Backer painted Lamplight, it was revolutionary—not for grandeur, but for its truth: a woman in her own light, absorbed in a book. No grand gestures, just the quiet of focus. Today, that quiet is a luxury. Sætre’s drawings show the same hands, but now they scramble over piles of tasks, and the lamp has been replaced by notifications.

Sætre describes her work as rooted in a gnawing sense that our metrics of value ignore what truly sustains us. She draws births, dishes piled high, hands smoothing a fevered child’s brow, the fragile peace of weekends before Monday’s meetings resume, conversations at dinner tables meant to anchor anxious teenagers, the labor of laundry, visits, and calls to aging parents. These motifs bleed onto the page like entries in an unbalanced ledger, rendered in urgent red and blue.
​

Now, as AI promises another revolutionary shift—liberation through automation, time saved and sold—her work visualizes the tension between technology’s promise and its cost. Efficiency, yes, but what of the inefficiencies that make us human? Teaching a child to tie their shoes can’t be optimized. Will AI revolutionize equality, or reinforce old patterns? Her series Jobb eller Fritid? (Work or Free Time?) captures this dilemma: the clash between productivity and humanity, between what’s valued and what’s taken for granted. These drawings are more than observations; they’re invitations to ask: 
​What would it mean to count what truly counts?
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The UN estimates gender equality is 300 years away. A 2024 study notes women still have just two-thirds the legal rights of men. Sætre’s art insists we keep tally—not in currency, but in care.



  • Work
    • FREDSKULTUR
    • PeaceCulture
  • About
  • Text
    • reviews
    • interviews
    • publications
    • public talks
  • cv
    • press
    • contact