Whitewhashing

Appropriating a polemical term, Rébecca Chaillon plays together the literal meaning (whitening one's skin) and the figurative meaning of "whitewhashing" (making white people play the role of racialized characters) to unmask the hygienist unconscious linked to skin color.

On stage, she draws a critical parallel between the work of a cleaning lady and the care she takes of herself, the better to put into perspective the cleaning of a white society by a black woman and the injunctions that drive her to want to lighten her skin. In this head-on, resolutely subversive performance, Rébecca Chaillon deconstructs the assignments and pressures exerted on minority identities, as well as the internalized racism to which they lead. A queer and Afrofeminist artist, she adopts an intersectional point of view to reveal cosmetic norms as the Trojan horses of a strategy of social make-up, the instrument of a biopolitical domination that whitewashes even its name.