Hard graft (informal British slang): hard work or heavy labour. The term seems to have evolved from ‘spade’s graft’ or how much earth can be thrown up at one time with a spade. Interestingly, the origin of hard graft lies in an aspect of labour that is usually stigmatised and underrepresented in terms of rights. It is this reflection of marginalised labour in art and the impact of architecture on working conditions that form the crux of the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights. The show traces how people are affected by their labour conditions (with a focus on undervalued work such as sanitation or domestic work), organised around the spaces associated with such labour—historically as well as today—the Plantation, the Street and the Home.

“Hard Graft is the first exhibition I have curated since joining the curatorial team at the Wellcome Collection in December 2023 [with a] focus specifically on marginalised forms of labour and their impacts on the bodies and health of workers. I also focus on the rights that the workers consequently have or don't have in relation to healthcare access or, more simply, to the equal care and consideration of their bodies over others within our workplaces, public spaces, cities and more broadly, within society. The exhibition urgently asks what kinds of work we value and why? And what traces does work leave on the body?” the curator, Cindy Sissokho tells STIR. These questions are explored through a selection of photographs, artworks and other media from Wellcome’s rich and diverse collection relating to aspects of health; along with contributions of existing works from a range of contemporary artists such as Lubaina Himid, Adelita Husni Bey, Charmaine Watkiss, Vivian Caccuri, Forensic Architecture, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Shannon Alonzo and Daniela Ortiz. Lindsey Mendick and Moi Tran produced new commissions. 

The art exhibition sets its tone in an introductory section that includes Adelita Husni Bey’s film Gestures of Labour (2009), which abstracts the notion of labour and toil to hands. The film shifts visitors’ attention from the migrants living in Jakarta, Indonesia in Kampungs (independent community settlements), to the work they carry out, by focusing on the workers’ hands as they stitch, clean, sort; their faces out of frame. The opening section also turns its attention to the theme of protest with photographs from the Bouba Touré Archive. These images document the experiences of Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK to address post-war labour shortages and formed migrants' movements for national workers’ rights. Their rights continue to be severely impacted by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act.

From the introductory section that acts as a transitional space, visitors move into the section that highlights workers in plantations. This has an open layout, signifying expansive fields. Tied to histories of colonialism and capitalist extraction, plantations have been historically known to have inhumane working conditions that severely impact workers. For instance, a 19th century lithograph from Wellcome’s collection depicts tea plantations in China, while opposite it, Dark Garden (2021-ongoing), by Md Fazla Rabbi FaIq acts as a response, documenting workers and tea plantations in Sylhet, Bangladesh today through photographs. Rabbi FaIq frames these workers’ lives through portraits and also images of the houses they live in. As the artist describes, the works allude to the fact that tea gardens and the working conditions of those who work in them have stayed almost the same since they were developed by British colonial merchants in the 19th century.

Tracing the long term effects of colonialist practices, specifically those of extraction and pollution of natural ecosystems, Forensic Architecture’s film, Environmental Racism in Death Alley, Louisiana (2021), narrates how mass-polluting industrial facilities are affecting the health of local communities living on former plantation land in the Southern USA. Countering violence inflicted by colonialism while emphasising the role of community, a multimedia installation by London-based Charmaine Watkiss dwelling on the forgotten histories of the women who used to cure illnesses on plantations with traditional healing practices in the Caribbean.

The space dedicated to works addressing the street centres the special commission Money Makes The World Go Round (2023-24) by Lindsey Mendick in collaboration with SWARM (the Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement) and author Mendez. While on the one side stands a church facade, the other side displays a video of Jamaican-British author Mendez—who formerly worked as a sex worker—performing a sermon addressing the demands for better rights and safety for sex workers. Stained glass windows on either side of the video installation depict Christian saints such as Mary Magdalene who were formerly sex workers as well. Ceramic money boxes created by the artist for the installation are meant to signify various issues related to such work. According to the artist, the interactive installation was inspired by two instances in Lyon and London where activists fought to decriminalise and destigmatise sex work. By positioning sex work as legitimate (an often contested idea), the exhibition flags the harsh restrictions imposed on such workers. For instance, while buying and selling sex is legal in the UK, advertising and soliciting it is criminalised, meaning workers often end up incarcerated, limiting their rights such as access to proper healthcare. The lighting design in this section is particularly notable, creating a dim, almost sinister atmosphere that the curator links to the lived experiences of women on dark streets.

The section also dwells on the hazardous nature of work for sanitation workers and waste pickers. Vikram Divecha’s Sweeping (2016) presents street photographs focused on six sweepers, which show the daily routine of each—all of them Indian migrants—as they go about cleaning the streets of Sharjah. In Divecha’s images of Indian migrants is the implication of how work such as sanitation is often unrecognised—with commuters often ignoring sweepers in their daily routines—and unprotected by international labour laws. In conjunction, Ernest C. Withers’ images of sanitation workers protesting in Tennessee in 1968 serve as a reminder that the street is also where people gather in solidarity and dissent.

While the spatial denotation of each section of the exhibition design acts as a way to think through what work is recognised and how it affects workers, this thematic logic vitally underscores gender bias, most evident when one considers the section on home. Traditionally viewed as the women’s sphere, housework and childcare are usually invisible, while also being normally unwaged for housewives. Shannon Alonzo’s sculpture, Washerwoman (2018) asks visitors to confront this reality, depicting a headless woman doing laundry. The sculpture points to the repetitive and difficult task of washing; the woman’s fingers are swollen and her dress muddied. Apart from Alonzo, other works in the exhibition space stresses on the experiences of those engaged in domestic work, often undocumented and unregulated. Daniela Ortiz’s photographic series Maid Rooms (2012) shows the awful living conditions of househelp (usually immigrants) in upper class households in Peru, while Kelly O’Brien’s staged images from the series No Rest for the Wicked (2022) depict cleaners informed by her mother and grandmother’s experiences. A model, their face masked by a mop, slumps, in part because of the weighted shoes she wears, each has bricks tied to them.

Speaking about the emphasis on the built environment prevalent in the show, Sissokho notes, “During my months long research, I realised that there was very little research on the impact that design and architecture have on our health and bodies…The works [on display in Hard Graft] strikingly challenge us to think about this intersection of health, architecture and work.” This intersection is also evident in how the exhibition is staged. “We move from an expansive rural land to the city to end on our most intimate space, the home, that is also a workspace for many. I wanted to take the visitors into a navigation flow and bodily experience across these three workspaces,” Sissokho explains.

The exhibition concludes with the second commissioned work, Care Chains (Love Will Continue To Resonate) by Moi Tran in collaboration with The Voice of Domestic Workers, an education and support group that advocates for the rights of Britain's 16,000 migrant domestic workers. Where Bey’s film brought our attention to labouring hands, Tran asks us to consider caring hands. Tran films domestic workers who traditionally cook, clean and look after children (all acts of care), clapping, stomping and snapping their fingers, again with a focus solely on their hands. The installation immerses a visitor by including a soundscape and allowing them to experience the vibrations from the clapping, while acknowledging that it is the hands that care.

As highlighted time and again in the works on display, while there remain many aspects of labour in today’s globalised world that are undocumented, unregulated and severely underrepresented, there also exist communities that care for and resist these injustices. “I wanted to make sure that the exhibition didn't only address issues in relation to work and health but to outline as a continuous [common theme] throughout the exhibition that workers have across times fought for their rights, their existence and their humanity in ingenious ways whether through, for example, collective action, protests, the use of non-Western medicinal healing practices or being unionised,” Sissokho notes in conclusion.