Spotlighting Resistance: Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection
The physical toll of labour throughout history takes centre stage at Wellcome Collection's latest exhibition...
By
Rhea Mathur
January 6, 2025
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
Hard Graft at the Wellcome Collection is an exhibition that discusses the impact of physical, exploitative labour on the human body. It focuses on enslaved, marginalised and ostracised communities including plantation, sanitation, sex and domestic workers and the environment in which these workers operate. The exhibition is divided into three sections - beginning with ‘The Plantation’ followed by ‘The Street’ and ‘The Home’. The introduction to the exhibition and its three sections is accompanied by a small illustration created by the visual artist, Sabba Khan. The illustrations depict various working conditions, with the central focus on the worker and their body. Khan adds to these illustrations inserting flowers that surround the human body, known for their healing properties and that grow in cities. By bringing attention to workers, their working conditions, their physical bodies and their journeys, Hard Graft also honours active, collective resistance and healing practices that have allowed workers comfort and solace over these centuries of exploitation.
One of the first works in this exhibition is Bangladeshi photographer, Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq’s ongoing project, Dark Waters. His nine giclée prints are displayed in natural wood frames and together illustrate the dark reality of workers’ lives in tea factories and plantations. Fatiq focuses on the tea plantation set up in 1854 by British merchants in the Bangladesh region of Sylhet, which housed a factory that attracted workers from many parts of India who migrated to the beautiful lands in the hope of work, money and a better future. Currently earning a little over one pound a day, the conditions of these workers have only deteriorated over the century. Fatiq showcases this harsh reality with his image of a worker’s hand that was crippled while using a machine in the factory, as well as an image of an eye injured by harmful pesticides. Surrounded by rivers and running along the mountainside, Fariq’s prints reveal the exploitative reality of working conditions in these beautiful and vast tea plantations.
The focus of the exhibition then shifts from suffering to resistance with a leather-bound book written by German naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian sitting in a glass vitrine and open to a page with an illustration of a yellow flowering plant. Known as the peacock flower or Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the plant was used by enslaved women to abort unwanted pregnancies, an act of resistance which allowed them to stop any children being born into enslavement, leaving the plant as an emblem of that freedom of choice. Writing, Histoire générale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l'Europe (1771), one of the most extensively researched publications about flora and fauna written by a woman, Merian’s knowledge was heavily influenced by women at a sugar plantation. Handed down from generation to generation, its understanding of nature, healing properties, and ways to eat and cook food, all became methods of resistance for enslaved Indigenous and African people.
Discussing the mass incarceration system in the USA, informed by the exploitative plantation system, the life and working conditions of sanitation workers, unpaid household labour and the health of sex workers, the exhibition uses over a hundred objects to expose the realities of the current systems. As much as it does so, it also focuses on the idea of relief, healing and growth, using the exhibition itself as a starting point for a discussion about better working conditions. It also visualises a more focused understanding of the impact of oppression on the human body and pushes its audience to reflect on more inclusive systems for a more equal world. The exhibition ends with Shannon Alonzo’s Washerwoman, a beeswax sculpture made by the artist in her grandmother’s home in Trinidad. The work reflects on the physical impact of washing clothes- the constant hot water and the harsh soap on the body, using a decaying body. Next to this sculpture is a multimedia installation called Care Chains by Moi Tran, which discusses the 23,000 people who migrate to the UK each year to work as domestic workers in private households. The multi-sensory installation features twelve domestic workers who channel the message of resistance and love in their bodies, a large table vibrating with the energy of their conscious release. Tran’s moving and emotive installation harmoniously brings together this exhibition that highlights and honours resistance to systems of oppression and brings action and agency into the body, hoping to create a better tomorrow.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is showing at Wellcome Collection until 27th April 2025.
