Other Words for Labor
(Quantic Association)

Anca Bucur
Anca Nica
Andra Tarara
Antonella Lerca Duda
Dana Andrei
h.arta
lasmin Al-Qaisi
Laura Sandu and Mișa Dumitriu

Curators: Dana Andrei and Anca Bucur

Through the exhibition Other Words for Labor we are bringing to the forefront different forms of social reproductive labor which continue to be feminized within capitalism. The establishment of the market economy as the sole economic reality has led not only to the discursive separation of the economic sphere from the political one, but it also contributed to a clear division of labor where waged labor is the only form of labor recognized as such, and the existence of workers is reduced to the job they hold. 

The theoretical framework of social reproduction feminism that informs this exhibition helps us develop an understanding of labor beyond the rigid relations of the market economy and directs our attention to those forms of labor that, within the capitalist system, continue to be excluded from the scope of the term „labor.”

Other Words for Labor includes archival documents and research, interviews, artistic and literary works, testimonies about domestic work, florists’ work, sex work, artistic work in capitalism, as well as research on agricultural labor, labor in the silk textile industry, and the socialization of domestic labor in state socialism. The exhibition brings together artists, activists and researchers, and is conceived in the spirit of creating a counter-hegemonic framework, in which modes of labor organization from our recent history are confronted with its organization in the present capitalist context.

The aim of the exhibition is to build new ways of thinking about labor, based on the socialist feminist tradition, against and beyond the social, political, and economic frameworks of exploitation and oppression. And towards a possible better world.

Events within the exhibition:

May 1 – Guided tour + discussion on Political Labor and Anticapitalist Organization
May 6 – Guided tour + launch of the Master’s Program in Labor and Social Transformations, F.S.A.S.
May 8 – Public reading/preview of the anthology In the Invisible Field of Labor (forthcoming from frACTalia press)
May 10 – Guided tour + discussion on Artistic Labor and the Capital

The exhibition Other Words for Labor was created as part of the cultural program „Literature and Labor. Stories of Women at Work 2024-2025,” organized by Quantic Association. The program is co-financed by AFCN. The program does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the program or for the way in which the program’s results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.