An Unsatisfying Metaphor

2020 40 min

What can the World Trade Organization’s art collection tell us about the history of modern capitalism? This story begins in Geneva in 1919, at the founding of the International Labour Organization after the First World War. And it crescendos at the Century’s end with the Seattle protests of the WTO ministerial meetings in 1999. If there is an antagonist in this story it is a building. Once the home of the International Labour Organization (ILO) it was originally built under a mission for the dignity of work, following the chaos of world war. But by the 1970s, and culminating in the 90s, the building is faced with a crisis of character, made apparent by its transformation from an organization for international labour into an organization for the world’s trade, the WTO. Pitted against the building is the protagonist of the disembodied hand. The hand’s journey begins inside the building, adorning the walls of its interiors in celebrated depictions of people laboring from around the world. But a consequence of the building’s turn sends the hand into exile. Images of working hands and bodies were covered up or taken down and replaced by abstracted flows, grids and maps. Who gets to imagine the world and who must care for it after? This work goes hand in hand.

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