Vernacular presents Trade, the second chapter of the exhibition Citizens in the Shade, Aliens in the Sun including site-specific installations, photography and video by artists Georgina Arizpe, Karolina Breguła, Musquiqui Chihying and Hou I-ting. Emphasising the economic acts of exchange, Trade draws on parallel notions of labour, property and the transitory impact of value to reveal the distribution of power. 

Arizpe and Hou share a concern with modern, governed labour in practices that problematise structural margins in the system of trading.  

Hou’s Correction Arts Exhibition Hall considers the relationship between modern imprisonment institutions and high-density production lines. In 2019, the artist commissioned a for-profit workshop in a female prison in Taiwan to manufacture products, drawing an analogy to the free market and the mechanism of penal labour. 

Empleo Temporal, Acceso [Temporary Employment, Access] is a social experiment initiated by Arizpe in 2019, commissioning Don Tomás, an unemployed elderly blacksmith, to fabricate metallic stars associated with latent violence in Mexico. Through this equivocal act, the artist challenges the borderline between work, labour, legality and illegality through their relationship of employment. 

Chihying’s and Breguła’s works focus on the politics of development and its hidden costs and losses in terms of property and cultural capital. 

Exercises in Losing Control is an on-going project by Breguła set in East Asia. Since 2018, the artist has observed mass evictions and demolitions taking a participatory approach to create a multi-faceted narrative that encompasses performance, film, photography and publication. The project reflects the unequal fight and the perception of losing from the resisting protesters. 

The Sculpture, an experimental documentary made by Chihying, is an investigation into the recently established collection of African art in the National Museum of China in Beijing. By carefully inspecting these foreign objets d’art, the artist unveils the politics of recognition and material redistribution that are complicated by the present three-way bond among China, Africa, and Europe.

The title, Citizens in the Shade, Aliens in the Sun, is referenced from a poetic prose written by Raqs Media for supercommunity in 2015. The text conveys a series of doubts on any definition of a fundamental freedom that may mask hidden costs. Departing from these same questions and in response to the current moment of planetary crisis, the exhibition manifests the two or three things we may know about marginalised peoples while acknowledging the inherent distance between their experiences and our own. 

Artists: Georgina Arizpe, Karolina Breguła, Musquiqui Chihying, Hou I-Ting

To read the artists biographies here