A tribute to frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, supermarket cashiers who would serve hundreds of customers each day during the peak of the epidemic. A semi-fictional ecosystem is proposed composed of an amalgam of materialities, economies, temporalities, and immunities.
Concrete-labour is dissected revealing a creative act, the craft of decoupage, mostly practiced as a hobby by children or the elderly in Cyprus and often encountered as cut-out napkins glued onto smooth ocean rocks. The seashells depicted, like fossils, hint at a ‘prehistoric’ creativity concealed under layers of concretized labour time. Water, one of the fundamental ingredients for concrete production and a basic necessity for sustaining the body, is present and accessible to viewers via a water dispenser. A fragile dysfunctional ceramic clock, struggling to tick time, contrasts the compacted, condensed, and compounded confidence of concrete, suggesting a different temporality for the body.
Sculptural installation first presented at Thkio Ppalies as part of the exhibition Fabrica Hill, Nicosia, 2021.