Sweatshop, Generation & Display, 2022, London, UK. Curater: Amelie Mackee

  • Hangover, 1900-2022. Archival Print, 50 x 45 cm. Detail.
  • Proxy (sweat,White collar crimes) 2022, Mixed Media, Detail.
  • Proxy (sweat,White collar crimes) 2022. 55 x 55 cm. Mixed Media. Photo credit Dor Even Chen
  • Sweat!, 2022, 18:57 minutes. Single Channel video. Still from Video.
  • Sweat!, 2022, 18:57 minutes. Single Channel video. Still from Video.
  • Sweat!, 2022, 18:57 minutes. Single Channel video. Still from Video.
  • Sweatshop 2022 Installation view. Photo Credit Dor Even Chen

Sweatshop presents a series of new works that depart from the process of perspiration (sweat) — an internal process that manifests stress, modifying temperature, as well as an intimate manifestation of effort and pleasure. The works deal with information trade and emotions as commerce, highlighting the intricate enmeshment of technology with bodies, exploitation, violence and labor.

The intimacy is clashed with actuarial tables, a discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, finance, and other industries and professions. More generally, actuaries apply rigorous mathematics to model matters of uncertainty.

 

Vardi manipulates historical archives related to the ‘two-penny hangover’ from Victorian England. The penny

sit-up was one of the first homeless shelters created in London. Clients were purchasing the temporary right to lean on a rope so that they could fall asleep whilst sitting without the risk of falling.

 

Sweat! Detail

 

Cinematography: Dor Even Chen.

Installation view photo credit: Dor Even Chen.

Sound design: Beatrice Voster.

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