The exhibition
“Lost in Work“ presents works by two Berlin-based artists who examine different
aspects of the theme “work“. The sound installation “Work Station” (2008) by Simone
Zaugg fills the space with 8 headphones hanging from the ceiling. In each a
different workers’ song is heard, highlighting different approaches to work
from Egypt to Jamaica and Scandinavia to Armenia.
The artist learnt, sang and
performed the songs herself and thus sought to investigate diverse facets of
the theme between aggression, despair and joy. Work songs have traditionally
accompanied work, they can express satisfaction and liberation, they can
articulate a political positioning and reflect the self-empowerment of the
workers.
Mohamed Badarne’s project “Come Back Safely” (2013) addresses
the lives of construction workers who are often forced to earn their living
under dangerous conditions and with minimal safety measures. The photos are
carefully staged, according to the same principles as frames in a film and
always created in collaboration with the people in them. They show the workers
at work, during moments of rest and contemplation, in prayer and in company.
The images offer intimate and poetic insights into a world in which human
beings are often reduced to anonymous numbers in statistics, yet remain unseen
and unrecognized. Badarne’s photos show Palestinian workers who work on
construction sites in Israel. Here, they do not appear as the sad and passive victims of a capitalist system run wild that
force a growing number of people to seek work far away from their families, but
rather as fellow human beings with histories, dreams and wishes of their own.
