This is Essential Work, 2022

Online; Viewing room www.thisisessentialwork.com

Curated by Michal Nahman (UWE, Bristol) and Susan Newman (Open University)

This Is Essential Work is an online open-access intersectional feminist exhibition initiated by academic mothers and creators,Michael Nahman(UWE, Bristol) andSusan Newman(Open University) in response to their experiences and interdisciplinary research on the commodification of breastmilk and forms of exploitation of women's bodies and labour.

This exhibition emerged from research funded by a UWE Vice Chancellor's Award for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research conducted just before the Covid-19 pandemic, in Bengaluru, India, into mother's provision of “excess” breastmilk to a private company that was processing it and selling it at the profit Why did mothers give their milk? Because they were convinced that they were helping others in need and that they could do this without cost.

This is not unique to breastmilk. It is not enough to just write about this in the distant realm of academia. Those who engage in social reproductive labor work hard; giving in the home, caring for their own children, for other peoples' children, and for other family members in a multitude of ways. The way that social reproduction is organized in capitalist society has relied upon and entrenched social divisions and continued oppression along classed, gendered and racialised lines. Those from oppressed groups are on average paid less, more likely to be in precarious employment, and in jobs that are undervalued in a capitalist society, such as care work.

For this exhibition, the art conveys how work and bodies get devalued. This feminist exhibition is about showcasing this gendered work: to acknowledge, to grieve, and importantly, to connect with one another. 

We are showcasing mother/artists who question the value that society puts on their work, including all kinds of labour. The list of our Essential Work is endless and it holds up the world. We ask: What is the value of reproductive labor today? How does it report to other forms of paid and unpaid work?