Made Elsewhere for Cheap

Inspired by the photographic and documentary works of Edward Burtynsky and his “manufactured” and “manufacturing landscapes”, I wanted to explore my understanding and relationship to the culture of consumption of cheap foreign goods. Burtynsky’s works reveal our overwhelming pressure on the planet and its people and allow us to take a moment to experience ‘concern’. This ‘uneasy contradiction’ may arise each time one glances at a label reading “made in China (Bangladesh, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico…).”

As a student of textile art, I brought my focus to the textiles we wear closest to our bodies: a t-shirt, a pair of socks, some underwear. These second skins touch our vulnerability; we are ‘drawn by desire’, addicted to the ready-made and cheap to quickly fulfill our unending want. These garments represent economics, politics and power (corporation-controlled governments) and pollution (over ½ lb of petrochemicals were used at one time in these cotton items that were purchased 2nd hand for this work). For all of these costs I wonder what has been achieved, especially when, at the end of a few wears, these cheap items are often disposed of (or sent to a corporation-owned 2nd hand store like Value Village®).

The use of the word “Addict” as a chaotic all-over pattern emphasizes our chaotic pattern of consumption addiction. “Made in China” is an after thought if the look and price are right. Do we know the trail of the cheap t-shirt? We know that it was made elsewhere, by someone else, for cheap. The gold ring symbolizes our western industrial idea of happiness, greed, riches, “bling” and status; in economics, money is the bottom line. What effect does this mass consumption have on the makers?

“China’s youthful peasant population is quickly abandoning traditional extended-family village life, leaving the monotony of agricultural work and subsistence income behind for a chance at independence.”
- Edward Burtynsky

Whereas those in developing nations are becoming privy to ‘a chance at independence’ by spending 10 hours a day making things like t-shirts for the Western market, we in the west (Japan, Canada, US, AUS and NZ) are very attracted to the availability of cheap clothing as a way to fulfill our desire to appear independent, quickly and easily. This is a complex relationship of enablement, fueled by addiction, disguised by ‘empowerment’.
What does our western ‘concern’ look like?