Sudarium/ Tenugui/ Sweatcloth
Guimarães, PT 2022
Industrial digital print on industrially woven cotton, folded and handsewn
30cm x 90cm each
During the heatwaves of global warming, mostly caused by industrial greed, with these sweatcloths we can wipe our sweaty foreheads as they touch, across time and space, with three imprinted foreheads of a portuguese factory owner, a portuguese textile worker and a forced labourer on a cotton field in Angola under Portuguese colonial rule.
Produced and exhibited at Contextile 2022 Contemporary Textile Art Biennial. Guimarães, PT. Curated by
Cláudia Melo.
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Three Tenuguis folded in cabinet depicting the foreheads of a portuguese factory owner, worker and a forced labourer on cotton fields in Angola which were supplying and sustaining the Portuguese textile industry until the independence from the portuguese colonial rule.Contextual videoArchive image detail of former portuguese textile factory worker in
Guimarães
The order of the Sweat Cloth also hints at the hierarchies at place and the modes of dependence. Without the cheap forced labour in Angola and, to a lesser extend, the exploitation of the worker in Portugal, the manager would not have been able to succeed.Forced labour on a cotton field in Angola under Portuguese colonial ruleWorker in a former textile factory in Guimaraes, PTManager of a former textile factory in Guimaraes, PT