Wein (Sculptures)

In the fall of 2020, I worked as a seasonal worker in an Austrian wine yard, together with my mother and other migrant workers. The sculptures are an embodiment of this experience, done in the following months. Relying on my technique of papier mâché, where I am using only recycling papers, I first created small figurines, using the space between my palms, which both contains and also models their shape, making reference to the space and movement of the palms that the seasonal work of picking up grapes involves. Then the sculptures grew in size, and the shapes of the working bodies melted in the material, with the cast of my hands only hinting at bodies, going in or coming out of the papier mâché mass. 
At first sight there is a temptation to see an ambivalence of either symbiosis or power play between the working body and the ‘nature’ of the material in the sculptures, sustained by the flowing stony like shapes. However, the discrepancy between ‘productivity’ of the working-machine-body and its human status, connected to regeneration, is revealed as complicated and complex.