Boundless Flow
Curated By Eunice Chen
Works by Simone Couto, Tianlan deng, Matthias Liechti, and W Teng
On view: February 23—March 02, 2022
CP Project Space
132 West 21st Street, 10th Floor, NY, 10011
PRESS RELEASE: CLICK THE LINK
A Day Has 12 Coats
2 InkJet “Watercolor” Print on Japanese and Silk Thread
Paper, 11.7 x 16.5 inches
Artist’s Testimonial
"Author: Anyway, Angela, what is it that you do?
Angela: I take care of life."
—A Breath of Life, By Clarice Lispector
Sometime in 2019, I stumbled upon a room with several boxes filled with over 3000 membership cards of immigrants who joined La National—the 150-year-old benevolent society that has been supporting Spanish and Portuguese-speaking immigrants in Manhattan since the late 19th century. I noticed that the pictures of twenty-two female immigrants were missing, and according to their cards, most of them worked as seamstresses in the Garment District.
The garment industry was a major force in helping shape New York City, creating one of the most significant turning points in American politics and urban planning. Similarly, I am an immigrant—but one with more choices than the desperate females that wrote down their professions in the cards I held. I am grateful for the women who paved the way for me today. Despite the differences in our circumstances, we are connected through labor. I feel unparalleled empathy towards them when my left index finger tends to bleed from the repetitive motion of my sewing machine.
To commemorate the stories of these European and Latin American immigrants, I created A Day Has 12 Coats: art that aims to turn perception into knowledge and provoke thinking beyond personal boundaries. I focused on the object itself, its origin, and the workspaces where the immigrants worked, considering the power of memory, reproduction, and—most of all—the labor bound to repeating a routine. I printed pictures of an NYC garment shop in full swing and an early Singer Sewing Machine multiple times until the image was completely immersed in a blurry shade of many colors. Then I picked up my needle and stitched a remembrance of their legacy.
