The Trophy Wives Awards

The Trophy Wives Awards is a triptych of 3D-printed sculptures finished in gold, silver, and copper leaf, borrowing the visual language of Olympic medals and ceremonial trophies. These objects carry the polished surfaces and symbolic weight of recognition, pointing to systems that elevate appearance and achievement while obscuring the labor underneath.

The work was created during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when caregiving, domestic management, and emotional labor expanded dramatically, often without acknowledgment or meaningful or structural support. The trophies become stand-ins for this contradiction: fancy on the surface, hollow at the core.

By presenting these forms as awards, the work asks how value gets assigned, whose labor is made visible, and what it means to offer recognition instead of fundamental change. The trophies are fancy. The labor they reference is not.

3D Printed Assemblages, gold, silver, and copper leaf. 2022.