The Match Factory

The series of large-format drawings „The Match Factory“ was created for the exhibition „The Revolt of the Machines Revisited 2022“ in Saarbrücken, which thematically addressed the question of the extent to which a digital machine world permeates our lives today 100 years after the Industrial Revolution. The match factory stands as prototype for a place in industrial capitalism in which the lives of women workers were terribly shaped by working conditions. The term „phossy jaw“ describes a necrosis of the lower jaw triggered by the inhalation of white phosphorus fumes, an extremely disfiguring and usually fatal disease.

In today’s world, we face a digitally-induced hyper-fire of false news and propaganda that threatens social cohesion. At the same time, we see the income gap between rich and poor widening, and we see traits of an emerging fascism with which the haves seek to defend their possessions and privilege.
The disruption of industrialization is repeated in every moment of our present through the pervasiveness of the digital.