WASH! (in piazza)
Maria Seddio, Pia Tempestini & WasherWoman Collective
Loving Off-Site
at The Third Annual Port Chester Arts Festival!
Clay Art Center and Neptune In June
Saturday, May 31st, 2025
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
The festival is a celebration of makers, designers, doers, and dreamers who call Port Chester home.
Info on location coming soon.
(*Rain date Saturday, June 14th)
WASH! in piazza is an intersection of art, therapy, and public engagement.
It is an interactive initiative that generates space for creating community and connection through therapeutic conversation at the washline. Participants engage in story-sharing and a trilogy healing ritual: words, witness, wash!
The project taps into a deeply empathetic and accessible experience that invites participants to share their stories and creates space to inspire bold visions for change. In times of complexity and uncertainty, it is in pockets of community that we gather fortitude and resilience so that we may imagine a promising future together.
A narrative family therapist, educator, and systems thinker, Maria Seddio has been She has been studying the cultura della lavandaia and celebrating the archetype of the washerwoman for over 25 years. An incredibly rich and generative body of work, WASH! lies at the intersection of feminist consciousness, cultural traditions, place-making, and collaborative community-building. It provides a means to bring people together to imagine what is possible and examine the ways in which we are defined (and continually redefined) through the telling of our own stories.
The fluid nature of the project allows us to tap into the needs of the community and context of the opportunity. Through our WasherWoman Collective, we partner with artists, practitioners, and community organizers to develop programming and art experiences that make sense for the context. We think the symbolism of the Washline aligns beautifully with the aspirational theme “The Future Belongs to the Loving”. We would welcome a conversation to design a collaboration and program (installation, workshop, hosted dialogue, etc.) that aligns with your visions for this project.
Please visit our website www.thewashline.com/wash-in-piazza and view our short video for further details.
About WASH!
WASH! is a multi-contextual, intergenerational participatory art and social change project that uses laundry -- a universal human activity -- as a grounding metaphor for exploring themes of feminism, labor, prejudice, bias, grief, community, and love.
Throughout history, washerwomen have been convening at the riverbank, in their back yards, at communal wash houses and in their neighborhood laundromats to do the wash! It is in these ordinary acts and moments of togetherness, that strong networks of resilience, fortitude, and mutual care are forged. The washline becomes a symbol of unconditional love and caring.
WASH! honors the legacy of our foremothers and the collective consciousness of all those who have relentlessly contributed to the invisible labor required to build resilient communities across generations. Washerwomen are not afraid to roll up their sleeves to do the hard (emotional) work of daily living. Through the lens of laundry, the process of washing becomes a symbolic representation for the cleansing, release, and renewal. To do the wash, is to be inherently optimistic for a new day.