SAD WON’T BUILD A BETTER WORLD | workshops

SAD WON’T BUILD A BETTER WORLD is not only Agata Zbylut’s exhibition at the Academic Design Centre, but also two workshops led by artist and designer Paweł Kaźmierowski, which refer to the drag queen aesthetic.

The theme of the workshop will be the work of the female factory workers of Łódź, the textile workers. The result will be designs for headscarves associated with textile workers, with embroidered words with feminist overtones. It seems very instinctive to look for similarities between women workers, who have to stand at machines for 12 hours, fight against the lack of respect for their rights and do not receive decent wages, and queer people. In the case of female textile workers, gender becomes almost invisible when hard work is required of them. On the contrary, it becomes a burden when female workers expect maternity leave, when they want to be treated with due respect by management, or when they do not have the physical strength to withstand the superhuman intensity of factory work. The issue of queer people’s sexuality is unfortunately even more on the surface, judged, challenged and taken up by an unlimited number of participants in this often absurd and hurtful discussion.

An attribute such as the headscarf, now worn not only by the elderly and women, and once the airy headgear of textile workers, becomes a meaningful allusion to femininity trapped in the machine-ridden world of male factory managers and executives.

Agata Zbylut’s exhibition SAD WON’T BUILD A BETTER WORLD is part of the ‘Women’s work never ends’ project, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture – a state earmarked fund.

More about the exhibition: https://lodzwielukultur.pl/en/wydarzenia/sad-wont-build-a-better-world-exhibition-finissage/