≥≥≥ 05.02 - 09.05 2021 Reykjavik Art Museum, Hafnarhús
’WERK - Labor Move’, solo exhibition curated by Birta Gudjonsdottir.
The installation WERK - Labor Move is made especially for the museum’s main hall as the building Hafnarhús was originally built as a warehouse on the quay. The exhibition is based on an examination of the functioning of the multi-layered global economy, and the perspective of the familiar, the local, is used to analyse and project a connection with the global. Parallels in the manual labor which went on in this building before are examined in the context of the gentrification process of the port area and similar development around the world. Hafnarhúsið is the first building by Reykjavík Harbour to be given a new role as a building for art and cultural activities and has become characteristic of the area, similar to the development of harbour areas everywhere.
The work consists of a three-channel filmic work, Labor Move; sculptures, directly related to the filmic work; and a video recording titled Labor Love which shows the assembling of the sculptures in the building in the run-up to the exhibition opening.
The exhibition consists of more than 5000 identical boxes that usually contain frozen fish. They create an immersive installation in a space of ca. 350 m2. The 3-channel video Labor Move is the centre point of the installation. We see several dockworkers performing specifically for the camera, based on movements they have become accustomed to over a long period of time while unloading boxes of frozen fish from within the hull of the first trawler and over to the quayside at Reykjavík Harbour. The same movements are repeated, they throw heavy boxes from one place to another with considerable coordination and skill. Labor Move is an art work in itself, but also a documentation in film and sound about the 48-hour performance of the dockers in front of viewers in the exhibition space in Leipzig in 2016. The 48-hour duration of the performance is the same time as the dockworkers usually have to unload the fish from a freezer trawler.