শোষিত
Denim is a very common material in our modern world and so it is very much of the current zeitgeist. I have used this material to raise awareness of the issue of Sweatshops, to represent how our comfortable lives are filled with Commodities that have a history with and are still being produced today by Companies who exploit their workers.
The issue of sweatshops has been intrinsically tied into the Fashion industry, especially in this present age of ‘Fast fashion’ where clothes are produced in large numbers extremely cheaply to keep up with competition. While we may think of Sweatshops as a thing of the past, it is still a massive issue in todays society.
And so I set about transforming the material so that the the humanitarian issues surrounding how it is manufactured can be graphically seen in the material itself.
I have used Bleach and its properties of taking the dye and colour out of the material of Denim to paint Negatively the highlights of my piece. This creates an intense contrast that emphasises the ambiguity and danger associated with bleach, so that it reflects the dangerous conditions which the Sweatshop workers are forced to endure.
The title of this Project written as above, or 'Śōṣita' is the Bengali word for 'Exploited', because the country with the highest population of workers in sweatshops is Bangladesh.
