Conflict Zones: Labor and Cultural Exchange in the Production of Contemporary Art Textile Works

Abstract

In 2014 the Hammer Museum coordinated a cultural exchange: six women contemporary artists traveled from Los Angeles to Afghanistan to work with weavers of traditional Afghan carpets. The designs imagined by the artists were produced by the weavers over a period of months, and the resulting works were exhibited and sold to benefit a women’s charity in Afghanistan. Ham Kyungah, the contemporary South Korean artist, has been exhibiting large-scale textiles since 2008. Ham illegally ships her designs across the demilitarized zone to be fabricated by skilled North Korean embroiderers. Although Ham has never met the workers who craft her designs, they must study her instructional templates—filled with messages that otherwise would have been censored—in order to reproduce them in thread and cloth and send them back over the border. Through such interactions, artists living outside of these conflict zones gain knowledge of and empathy for their inhabitants, and also provide the means for them to earn income and to access cultural content. In the artists’ home countries, the pedagogical nature of the exhibitions enables greater visibility around the lives of women in these other regions, shows the reach and the effects of war, and is meant to enlighten the gallery visitor. However, beyond its financial incentives, the educational “benefit” of the cultural exchange to the relatively anonymous practitioners of the traditional crafts warrants examination. Using highly skilled yet cost-effective labor in producing time-intensive textile pieces—which are then circulated as artworks in the home country—yields a large amount of surplus value, while long-held aesthetic traditions are subject to the influences of foreign artists and curators. I will assess how various aspects of value production within this cultural exchange model function with regard to neo liberal economic structures and to the underlying causes of global conflicts.

Keywords:

• Afghanistan
• War
• North Korea
• Art Market
• Embroidery
• Craft

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Janet Owen Driggs, who provided encouragement and feedback as ideas were developing.

Notes

1 Although liberalism is historically associated with a preference for free markets, many scholars today have made the assertion that neoliberalism, a more extreme economic model that promotes the transfer of wealth from the public sector (pensions, local services, natural resources, etc.) to the private sector (usually in the form of tax breaks and land leases), is sometimes even coerced via manufactured crises, e.g. the Iraq invasion (Klein, 2008). In the art world, neoliberalism manifests as philanthropists funneling tax-deductible donations through nonprofit organizations tasked with carrying out their cultural agenda, while taxpayer-funded federal, state, and local government support for the arts dries up. Neoliberalism replicates itself ideologically through the culture industry, appearing as the illusion of choice, the promotion of competition, or as merited social hierarchies evidenced by superior taste/intellect.

2 According to d'Arenberg, Ham aspires to “reach North Koreans and help them learn things.” (“Kyungah Ham in Conversation,” OCULA, July 28, 2016.)

3 In the context of an analysis of these artworks, I have chosen to provide only cursory markers of the history of U.S. involvement in the regions of Afghanistan and the Korean peninsula. For a more extensive perspective on Afghanistan, see Dexter Filkins The Forever War (2009). For more on Korea, see Bruce Cumings The Korean War: A History (2011).

4 At the time of this article’s publication, U.S. officials have begun brokering a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Although previous negotiations have consistently pressed for a ceasefire (heretofore a sticking point), current negotiators express confidence in the potential agreement despite a lack of details regarding concessions from the Taliban, who “still intermingle with international militants” and “maintain relationships of coexistence” with members of Al Qaeda, whom “they have never denounced” (Mashal, 2019). Many Afghans fear that America’s sudden lack of patience after seventeen years of partnership will cause the freedoms and values associated with their emerging democracy to evaporate. The potential to repeat mistakes made by the Soviets as they withdrew in 1988 is a concern voiced by current President Ashraf Ghani (Mashal, 2019).

5 According to Mark N. Katz of the Middle East Policy Institute, the “the American-led democratization effort in Afghanistan appears to have been flawed from the beginning.” He attributes these failures in part to the U.S. choice of Hamid Karzai as president without allowing national elections to take place. Karzai “has proven to be both extremely weak and extremely corrupt” (Katz, 2010).

6 Nasrat and Karimi offer an analysis of factors impacting carpet production in Afghanistan, one of which is a limited understanding of international design trends. However, they identify widespread corruption as having a far greater negative effect on the carpet industry (leaving very little compensation trickling down to the workers), citing a survey wherein 90 percept of responders indicated corruption as a significant problem (Nasrat and Karimi 2016).

7 According to a 2006 report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the U.S. has both the highest known incarceration rate and highest known incarceration numbers, with less than 5% of the world’s population but over 23% of the world’s incarcerated people. The U.S. rate that at that time—738 people in prison per 100,000—was not far behind the estimated rate of the Soviet Union’s Gulag era (Hartney 2006). Total numbers have declined in recent years, bringing the rate down to approximately 670 per 100,000 (Kaeble and Cowhig 2018).

8 See the controversy pertaining to the Whitney Biennial’s inclusion of Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket,” criticized for her representation of Emmett Till as an “exploitation” of an historical “moment,” rather than as an exploitation of laborers utilized in the completion of the work (as I argue with regard to Ham’s work). The potential financial gain by the artist is still central to the ethical critique, however, as expressed by artist Hannah Black’s open letter to the curators: “It is not acceptable for a white person to transmute black suffering into profit,” and by artist Parker Bright in his statement: “Nobody should be making money off of a black dead body.” (Gibson 2017)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Sabo

Stephanie Sabo is an artist, designer, and educator living in Los Angeles. She has exhibited her work nationally and works as a freelance textile designer. She received her MFA in art and writing from California Institute of the Arts and currently teaches at the University of Southern California and Otis College of Art and Design. [email protected]