“Nobody wants to work anymore” was the phrase appearing in job ads, op-eds, and on handwritten signs taped to the doors of shops and on the counters of thousands of businesses across the US with rapidly increasing fervor in the early years of the pandemic. The bosses hanging these signs were unable to see what was really happening. Nobody wanted to work for them, under these conditions, anymore. Workers in all positions had seen their employers’ easy willingness to sacrifice them in the service of business as usual, and their response was one of the largest mass resignations in US history. Un-unionized and unsung workers were revolting with this simple act of repossessing the value of their own bodies, time, and labor. It sent shock waves through the American economy, revealing the power that ordinary people could have to affect the ways they are ordered to live their lives. What they were saying was actually not new: that nobody wants to risk their life for work that only benefits the boss, nobody wants to have to choose between their family or their paycheck, or to face a choice between destitution and death, by disease or disaster. The truth behind those signs on shop counters is that everybody wants to spend their time on activities that are meaningful, contribute to their communities and their lives.

This exhibition is a manifestation of my ongoing research and artistic/political praxis, organizing in the labor movement as an industrial unionist in education, and thinking as a conceptual artist, questioning capitalism, and imagining and building a future where it is obsolete. The pieces are a mix of useful and conceptual objects, dialogue and its aftereffects, and potentialities for future politics. They reference visuals and language from protests and leftists movements around the world, as well as art history, playing with form. The Propaganda Library items live a dual life as they are carried into the streets for actions, pickets, celebrations and protests, then returned to the gallery.

Engaging in the daily grind of political movements, working in the details, struggling for sometimes tiny wins, feeling the needle move slowly, can grow tiresome. Art is how I remember to look up, remain curious, and recommit to the vision that keeps us all going. We must laugh together, celebrate our wins, while we continue the work. Let us bridge these worlds between artists and organizers, imagining and doing the work of collective solidarity in order to take back our lives from the wealthy and powerful few, and to build a new world for all of us. 

Visitors are encouraged to visit me during the Afterwork sessions for conversation about organizing and building power for the future we desire. Please return for the closing event, Saturday May 30th: an anti-work and labor movement “Propaganda Party” that will include live screenprinting and a free art giveaway.

—Erica Meryl Thomas

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Erica Meryl Thomas is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist, educator, and organizer living in both Portland, OR and Bellingham, WA. Her work explores labor, value, and exchange, and the various ways art and political movements influence each other. She often invites participation or works collaboratively with others as an embedded artist to uncover stories through personal interactions. The resulting projects take the form of installations, storytelling or documentary, interventions in public space, conversations, printmaking, publications and books, performances, and other forms. She organizes education workers as Co-Chair of her adjunct faculty labor union, Portland State University Faculty Association AFT local 3571, as an at-large member of the United Faculty of Western Washington, and she Co-Chairs the Portland - Democratic Socialists of America’s organizing committee Labor Working Group. Her work in political struggle, as a teacher and as an artist are intertwined, informing one another. 

ericamerylthomas.com

@ericameryl