KAI10, Düsseldorf, 2022:

In the age of globalisation, the world of work is less dependent on physical place and geographical location. But does space really disappear, or do new spaces of labour and new geographical references emerge to replace the old ones? These questions are central to the group exhibition Landscapes of Labour, which sheds light on current economic processes and the role of workers within them as a relationship based on spatial constellations.

Paid jobs, or unpaid care- and housework, physical or cognitive occupation, traditional and new forms of work: the interest of artists in the conditions and places of labour has increased over recent decades in parallel to the worldwide networking of economic processes. In a time when corporations increasingly do business in non-spatial transnational networks, labour is also increasingly losing its immediate visibility. Nevertheless, the artists in the exhibition succeed in looking behind the scenes by referring to the social, political and ecological consequences of the ongoing structural changes of economy. These urgent issues unfold in the exhibition as a far-reaching intertwining of physical spaces, local activity and digital processes in a globalised world. Not least, the artists show us the links between economic and political interests, which simultaneously come into play in the structuring of space.