Betty Yu's dedicated and expansive work in Punctures is anchored by a sewing machine and interactive scree titled The Garment Worker. This work focuses on the daily life of a garment worker and hardships she/he encounters working in a sweatshop. Visitors can touch the screen to reveal different stories and facts about the garment industry. Anchored by stories from the artist's family, Yu's work expands to both honor the histories of migrant labor in the nation and is an incisive investigation of the ways racial capitalism is integral to the continuing operation of the United States. “The Garment Worker” is contextualized by workers from another project by Betty Yu, “In/visible Labor in Chinatown”, which includes documents, textiles, and a rotary phone, with which visitors are encouraged to interact. Both works speak directly to how three generations of Yu's family live under the effects of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
This exhibition was part of Punctures: Textiles in Digital and Material Time. Consisting of three exhibitions and public programs that weave into each other, Punctures features artists who are invested in the intersections and history of textile practices, media art, and critical and liberatory politics, including trans fashion and domesticity; gendered and immigrant labor under global racial capitalism; Gelede women’s commemoration, protest and power as represented in textile work; speculative future-casting through Oglala Lakota knowledge systems, and more. The exhibition features installations by Betty Yu, Cecilia Vicuña, Charlie Best, Eniola Dawodu, Kite, and Sabrina Gschwandtner, performances by Charlie Best, Jodi Lynn Maracle, and Kite, and screenings of work by Jodie Mack, Pat Ferrero, Sabrina Gschwandtner, and Wang Bing.
On view from January 10–February 7, 2020 @ Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center, 617 Main Street Buffalo NY. Free and open to the public.
Read about “Invisible Labor in Chinatown”
