Picture of leather scraps in the garbage, factory in Florence, 2025

In and Out is a work-in-progress performance that stems from personal research on the history of Chinese labor forces in Europe. Considering the global movements of (cheap) labor as essential in the production and circulation of goods and services, the performance sets up a labor-intensive sequence of actions. Engaging scraps of leather fabric and yarn bobbins scavenged from the artist’s family leather bag factory in Florence (Italy), In and Out exhibits a boring reality made up of the mechanical sound of a sewing machine and a body adorned with threads, colors, memory, and resistance. Where are the concepts of “global division of labor,” “invisible production,” “circulation of goods,” “global consumerism,” and the capitalist system that dominates contemporary society hiding? How can one make this “hiding” visible?

Through a physical relation with materials and space—between reality and imagination—the performance brings forward a body that works, that resists, that carries within itself traces of a personal and collective history, reproducing minimal gestures that bring attention to detail. Resistance doesn’t appear as something spectacular, but as a form of duration, a will to remain, to occupy space.

✴︎ 45 min

Credits

Creation and performance Jessi Zhang | Mentor: Stefa Govaart