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Trousers, Wood, Mechanical Component, Springs, Fabric, Polish, Mannequin Foot, and Faux Leather Shoes
2024
100 x 60 x 60 cm
The piece explores the tension between tradition and modernity, merging handcrafted elements with mechanical components to critique the commodification of labour. Repetitive, physical tasks, though undervalued, remain integral to social systems. Examining how automation encroaches upon human effort prompts viewers to reflect on the cost of progress and the diminishing visibility of physical labour in a mechanised world.
By reimagining the shoeshine box—a symbol of gendered and classed servitude—through concealed actuators and simulated human gestures, the work exposes the erasure of bodily labour in favour of automated performance. The wooden hands, rendered uncanny by their metallic finish, oscillate between presence and absence, evoking the spectral remnants of human workers in post-industrial economies. The mass-produced faux leather shoe and trousers implicate fast fashion’s exploitative supply chains, while the handcrafted woodwork alludes to artisanal traditions eroded by commodification.
Theoretical underpinnings from Bourdieu and Gramsci resonate in the piece’s critique of self-exploitation under piece-rate logic, as the relentless shine-dirty-shine cycle mirrors the futility of "making out" under capitalist production. The actuator, hidden like the suppressed mechanisms of globalised labour, underscores automation’s false promise of liberation, revealing instead its reinforcement of systemic fragility. By framing shoeshining—a declining trade once reliant on human interaction—as an automated ritual, the work underscores the absurdity of progress that prioritises efficiency over dignity.
0 - - - 1 - - - 0 challenges the viewer to question what (and who) is rendered expendable in the march toward automation. The work refuses resolution, suspending us in the discomfort of its unresolved motion—a fitting metaphor for labour’s unresolved place in the contemporary imaginary.