Tania Candiani

Sewing Workshop. 2018. 120 hours of labor of two women seamstresses, cardboard patterns, cutting table, industrial sewing machines, fireproof fabric, cloth roll holder, work tools.

Sewing Workshop was the first of the three phases of the Captive Ascension project. During this first phase, two industrial sewing machines, a cutting table, a cloth roll holder, and work tools were installed, in addition to 18 real-scale cardboard patterns which were suspended halfway up in the Central Gallery of the Museum.

During the time this workshop was installed, two seamstress specialists in making aerostats, traced, cut, and sewed the balloon during 120 hours of labor.

This installation and live performance have the intention of making visible the movements of manufacture and work, seen as a rhythm and a series of strokes, which the artist calls “choreography of labor”. Understanding them as a kind of drawing in the space formed by the repetition of gestures, as a dance instruction.
Putting into operation a workspace within the museum allows the artist to bring the public closer to this understanding of manual work as an act of beauty and precision.