I am excited to be in the art show What’s Certain about Uncertainty? at Midland Center for the Arts. The Closing Reception will be on May 21 from 6-8pm. (The first day I’m officially immune!)
The exhibition runs April 12, 2021 – May 30, 2021 at the Midland Center for the Arts and then will travel to local churches in Midland, Michigan, through July 25, 2021.
Midland Center Exhibit Hours
THU / 5 - 8 PM
FRI / noon - 4 PM
SAT / noon - 4 PM
Dates & Locations
NOW - MAY 30 / Midland Center for the Arts
JUN 14 - JUL 25 / Midland Reformed Church
JUN 14 - JUL 25 / New Life Vineyard Church
JUN 21 - JUL 25 / Midland First United Methodist Church
https://www.midlandcenter.org/museums/alden-b-dow-museum-of-science-art/
Emma Johnson
Protective Mask #1
Digital Photograph
Frame size: 20 x 24 in.
Image size: 8 x 10 in.
2020
Frame size: 20 x 24 in.
Image size: 8 x 10 in.
Artist's Statement
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed, through race and class, how large the income disparity is in the U.S. However, this asymmetry in power is not confined within our borders. In Shenzhen, China, many workers are exploited to work long, hard hours to produce products for the First World. Coerced labor by the Uyghurs has been reported in Chinese factories as well. "Made in Shenzhen" is written in small letters on the 13-pack of masks I bought.
I wonder if my safety comes at the cost of ethnic cleansing and the re-education of minorities in labor camps. Regardless, low-paid workers on the other side of the world, who do not have the luxury to stay home, created the masks that keep me safe. This transaction is also the result of former-President Trump's decision not to invoke the Defense Production Act where PPE would have been produced in the USA. Adam Smith's invisible hand works even during a crisis. As a result, I am a stranger in a better economic position across the ocean wearing cheap, imported masks.
Worn on the face, an intimate part of the body, intimacy and self-care is juxtaposed with violent coercive capitalism. The pandemic creates a situation where Foucauldian hidden power structures, set up long before the crisis, enforce a dynamic where a stranger in desperate circumstances or working under duress could have been responsible for saving my life. The masks protect me and my community but fail to protect the workers who made the masks.
"We are all in this together," but inequities remain.
