Day Labor

 

"Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers." George Orwell.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.

 

I've always been struck by the sight of hopeful, waiting day-laborers. I find a huge disconnect between “Immigration” as a political entity and immigration as an individual experience made up as it is of many small, unique and personal dramas.

I looked online for images of day laborers and found the main source of them to be extreme anti-immigration activist sites such as www.minutemenproject.com and the extraordinary www.familysecuritymatters.org. In this artwork, I aimed to re-purpose those images and to pay homage to the personal, human stories behind the people in them.

The pieces are almost entirely made of construction materials - pigmented cement, reclaimed wood, metal and old tools.