What does work look like now? What might it look like in the future? How do we make visible work that’s been disregarded or ignored? How can these new representations leverage social change?

In response curators Daniel Eisenberg and Ellen Rothenberg, inaugural fellows in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice, have brought together over eighty participating artists in twelve projects that produce new representations of labor in an increasingly technologized global economy.

RE:WORKING LABORaims to produce not one conversation, but overlapping conversations—perspectives that touch one another—with representations of contemporary labor that shift in scale and scope, yet speak to each other in fundamental ways.

An integrated program of lectures, workshops, presentations, performances, and film screenings (see links below), has been scheduled to accompany the exhibition throughout fall 2019.

PROGRAMS:    http://sites.saic.edu/reworkinglabor/programs/

Participating artists include:

Yuri Ancarani, Stephanie Comilang, Antje Ehmann, Kevin Jerome Everson, Harun Farocki, Cao Fei,Fabien Giraud, David Hall, Deanna Ledezma, Carole Frances Lung, Nneka Kai, Ibrahim Mahama, Julia Pello, John Preus, Riar Rizaldi, Josh Rios, Anthony Romero, Stephanie Rothenberg, Gregory Sholette,Raphaël Siboni, Eva Stotz, Pilvi Takala, Ryan Trecartin, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Leilah Weinraub,Caroline Woolard, and Li Ziqi.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation; SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation; SAIC’s Department of Instructional Resources and Facilities Management; the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Center for Research + Collaboration SAIC; Goethe-Institut Chicago; the International Research Centre “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” at Humboldt University, Berlin; SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program; and by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. RE:WORKING LABOR is part of the Year of German-American Friendship initiated by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut and is supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

Curated by Ellen Rothenberg
and Daniel Eisenberg

Conversations on contemporary labor, from global perspectives of waged labor to the critical issue of anthropogenic climate change in a world driven by accumulation, expansion, and acceleration.