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Exhibition Reception: "Workers Dreaming," Photographs by elin o'Hara slavick

Workers Dreaming
Friday, October 19, 2018
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm

The public is invited to a public reception celebrating the exhibition "Workers Dreaming," photographs by elin o'Hara slavick.

On view in the Keohane-Kenan Gallery at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, "Workers Dreaming" is a series of 22 large-scale, color photographs (1999-2006) by Chapel Hill-based artist elin o'Hara slavick. Each photo is a portrait of a worker in their place of work - a street cleaner, a deli worker, a taxi driver - with their eyes closed, as if in a state of dreaming. Are they thinking about a faraway place that they would rather be? Are they taking a quiet break from their responsibilities? Each subject is an island of temporary calm in a busy, blue-collar workday.

"Workers Dreaming performs in the spaces between labor and leisure, agency and servitude," says slavick, Professor of Studio Art at UNC-Chapel Hill. "It is about the daily forgetting of those workers who build, clean, and transform spaces, often invisibly."

Slavick wants her photo series to transform the way we see, acknowledge, and interact with workers today. "Fundamentally these photographs are about labor: those who perform it and who are often under-recognized, under-paid, and unnoticed. Although our eyes are open, we are often blind to beauty, to injustice, to cultural difference, and to class structure," she says.

The exhibition is on view at the KIE through December 31, 2018.

Contact: Emily Bowles