[The pursuit of political truth is never a one-time arrival point,
but rather, something an artist must belabor again and again with each
new iteration expanding on the previous and informing the next.]
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“THEIR WEALTH, YOUR MISERY”: ART AND PROPAGANDA IN PANDEMIC TIMES
 
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Isabela Escalona
November 23, 2022
Workday Magazine
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_ The pursuit of political truth is never a one-time arrival point,
but rather, something an artist must belabor again and again with each
new iteration expanding on the previous and informing the next. _

,

 

While walking in the offices of the University of Minnesota Twin
Cities campus a few weeks ago, I came across a framed poster hanging
on a colleague’s cubicle. “We Are Working All the Time!” it read
in an ironic cursive font, in what I initially interpreted as a
demonstration from overworked students, or a message from the
university’s service workers’ union that narrowly avoided a
strike
[[link removed]] last
month. But when I looked closer, I realized it was from an art
exhibition that, I would soon learn, deliberately blurs the lines
between art and political propaganda. 

Piotr Szyhalski’s _We Are Working All The Time!,_ now on view at
the Weisman Art Museum through December 31, is the artist’s first
major exhibition showing work from his 30-year artistic career. While
spanning mediums and decades, the themes of our relationship to work,
truth, power, and political violence are consistent throughout his
multi-media practice that includes visual art, design, performance,
sound, photography, sculpture, and leaflets. 

The exhibition is a part of a broader and ongoing conceptual umbrella
by Szyhalski titled “Labor Camp.” In a description of the project,
the artist’s statement reads, “The Labor itself is the only
unchanging criterion of cultural merit. Thus: Suspending all
ideological banners, we work.” The framework suggests an ephemeral
approach to art by reworking ideas through experiment and exploration.
The pursuit of political truth is never a one-time arrival point, but
rather, something an artist must belabor again and again with each new
iteration expanding on the previous and informing the next. In an
interview with _Workday Magazine_, Szyhalski described Labor Camp as
the “ceaseless labor” of the artist, who is always thinking
critically, always questioning the dominant narratives, and always
creating as a response and alternative way of seeing and interpreting
the world. 

Too often, artists will shy away from the stigmatized descriptor of
“propaganda”—art that stands firm in its moral messaging, or art
that can be stapled to a street sign on a busy street corner (as
opposed to work that solely functions within the context of a posh
gallery wall). Propaganda art can be looked down upon or not taken
seriously as “fine art,” especially when it critiques the power
that larger art institutions often represent and benefit from,
like corporate sponsors
[[link removed]] or authoritarian
governments
[[link removed]].

Szyhalski doesn’t shy away from this taboo, but rather, owns it,
studies it, and takes political statements just as seriously as
technique, daily practice, and visual appeal. Through this approach,
he discards the notion of the role of the artist as a removed, morally
ambiguous commentator. For Szyhalski, the artist is a laborer who
confronts, questions, and creates through the noise of their
time—collectively and endlessly. 

A DAILY PRACTICE OF DOCUMENTATION AND DISSENT

The exhibit begins with monumental, wall-to-wall, bold, grayscale
posters that Szyhalski created as a daily practice to cope with and
make sense of the early months of the pandemic—beginning on March
24, 2020 and concluding November 3, 2020. The designs were posted each
day on the artist’s Instagram account
[[link removed]], accompanied by captions
with additional commentary, documenting the collective confusion and
fear of the early months of the pandemic. 

The posters evoke the early rhetoric present in those uncertain and
surreal first days during the onset in the United States. One of the
most dynamic aspects of the project is its chronological, day-by-day
reactions to the unfolding events of the era: from the constantly
switching CDC protocals, to the police murder of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, to the tension leading up to the 2020 presidential
election. The poster series serves as a daily meditation, as well as a
raw, real-time historical documentation of a traumatic and tumultuous
time of  history. 

After the initial stay-at-home order in Minnesota began to loosen and
more workers were ordered back into their workplaces, Szyhalski
responded to the policy decision on April 17, 2020 with a poster (the
25th in a series of 225) that reads, “Opening up America again!
It’s your job to die,” in bold lettering atop a cityscape with a
skull and crossbones hovering above swapping the bones for a hammer
and wrench, eliciting a specific appeal to the safety and wellbeing of
workers. 

[A black and white poster that reads, “Opening up America again!
It’s your job to die.” in bold lettering atop a cityscape with a
skull and crossbones hovering above swapping the bones for a hammer
and wrench by Szyhalski]

Piotr Szyhalski / Labor Camp “COVID-19: Labor Camp Report”

Another poster published on June 15, 2020, depicts two arms clinking
champagne glasses hovering over two hands bound by shackles, with the
text reading “Luxury & Brutality.” It’s a reference to the
operating principle of our time, intensified by the pandemic, that
some must die and suffer so that the few at the top can play. A later
poster in the series published on August 31, 2020, reads, “Their
surplus is your scarcity!” with the imagery of an eerie staircase
evoking the decline of one class and the mobility of another.

[A black and white poster with two champagnes glasses clinking and two
hands in shackles that reads, "Luxury & Brutality" by Szyhalski]

Piotr Szyhalski / Labor Camp “COVID-19: Labor Camp Report”

[A black and white poster that reads “Their surplus is your
scarcity!” with a broken staircase by Szyhalski.]

Piotr Szyhalski / Labor Camp “COVID-19: Labor Camp Report”

Though there is a solemn tone to the poster series, it is not without
its sarcastic humor. One poster from September 7, 2020 reads, “You
are never alone in the Labor Camp.” with two hands gripping a
hammer. Through mass death and isolation, the hands evoke shared
misery, but also a persistent hope through solidarity and unity.

[A black and white poster that reads, "You are never alone in the
Labor Camp.” with two hands gripping a hammer by Szyhalski]

Piotr Szyhalski / Labor Camp “COVID-19: Labor Camp Report”

REPOSITIONING PROPAGANDA 

Szyhalski examines the themes of political and state violence, and
economic coercion long before the pandemic, and in many ways his
lifelong interest in these themes set him up well to create 225
posters.  His lifetime of work also consistently examines the use of
ephemera and propaganda, from posters to leaflets to banners. In a
piece that sits at the corner of the gallery, a machine spits out the
leaflets up in the air, causing hundreds to amass on the gallery
floor. The guests can pick them up, take them home, step on them, or
display them elsewhere if desired. 

The leaflets feature jarring phrases and imagery, including a diptych
of camo print above the text “If” beside an image of a rash on a
person’s skin with the text “Then.” On the flip side of the
leaflet, an image of the American flag with the text, “You
decide.” The artist then repeats this structure of “If” and
“Then” with different imagery, critiquing the devastating cost of
war on human beings. 

[Exhibition photo from "We Are Working All The Time!"]

Exhibition photo from “We Are Working All The Time!”. Photo by
Isabela Escalona.

This is only intensified upon learning more about the historical
context of the leaflets. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, American
warplanes littered hundreds of thousands of leaflets
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no-fly zones, threatening Iraqi people not to defend themselves or
aggress the American planes hovering above. The leaflets dropped by
the U.S. military read, “Before you engage coalition aircraft, think
about the consequences.” “Think about your family, do what you
must to survive.” “No tracking or firing on these aircraft will be
tolerated. You could be next,” evoking a similar semantic structure
to Szyhalski’s reappropriation. 

Szyhalski’s intensive study of propaganda serves as a starting point
to create his own subversive interpretations. By reappropriating
American war propaganda and contextualizing the ephemera within its
violent and imperialist history, the leaflets arouse an even more
chilling and disturbing reaction in the viewer. The artist explains,
“Material carries a lot of weight, even before there’s any content
present. The material itself already suggests, and brings a certain
set of considerations, history, implications, ideas in and of
itself.” 

The artist approaches and reapproaches the same ideas through
different sensory experiences, mediums, scales, and
environments—creating an all-encompassing thesis that undeniably is
pro-worker and anti-war alike. In the face of mass loss from war,
disease, a poisoned environment, and working people to death and
despair, the work of the artist is to persist through. 

PERFORMANCE AS PROTEST, PROTEST AS PERFORMANCE 

In another corner of the exhibition, there is a small screen playing a
loop of various performances consisting mostly of experimental sound
design for live audiences in galleries, along with protest imagery and
a video of a 2017 performance taking place at the Minneapolis College
of Art and Design, where the artist works as a professor. Szyhalski
and a group of students unveiled a massive banner with the
straightforward message: “Their wealth, your misery…Your illness
is their income,” along the campus main thoroughfare. It reads as
both protest and performance art, and implies a potent overlap between
the two. The unveiling of a banner can serve as a centerpiece to a
picket line and a fine art exhibition alike. 

[Students hold up a banner entitled "THEM" that reads, "Their wealth
your misery" at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design]

Photo by Piotr Szyhalski.

[Students hold up a banner entitled "THEM" at the Minneapolis College
of Art and Design]

Photo by Piotr Szyhalski.

Some organizers may balk at the idea of protest as a performance, and
propaganda in general—certainly the terms are frequently weaponized
as a critique of activism that prioritizes clout, clicks, and imagery.
However, performance and propaganda are not inherently frivolous or
demonstrative, but rather, have a vital role in social and political
movements. 

Art and performance have long been tactics in protests, social
movements and strikes. Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, the AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) staged die-ins
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the steps of the Food and Drug Administration building to bring
attention and a sense of urgency to the mass death and illness in gay
and trans communities while politicians chose to ignore the crisis. In
a 2019 demonstrations led by photographer Nan Goldin, protesters
released
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of flyers that read, “Sacklers lie, people die” and distributed
fake prescriptions in the lobby of the Guggenheim to protest the the
Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis, as well as the
museum’s financial relationship to the family. More recently,
unionized Starbucks workers in Chicago constructed large puppets
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the picket line and reappropriated the company’s own holiday
marketing campaign for the purposes of the day-long strike. In this
compelling intersection of propaganda, protest, and performance,
Szyhalski finds himself in a continuum of a long history and amongst
righteous company. 

The exhibition opening of the initial iteration of the banner piece,
titled_ THEM _(at the now closed Soap Factory
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in Minneapolis) coincided with the police murder of Jamar Clark, whose
killing sparked weeks-long occupation
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the Fourth Precinct in north Minneapolis. When Szyhalski first heard
the news of the 24 year-old’s death, the artist had an idea: He had
all the equipment in place, and offered his tools and know-how to
organizers to create their own banners for the demonstrations with
whatever language they chose. In images of the protests
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the banners can be seen in Szyhalski’s signature style reading
“Justice for Jamar!” and “End State Violence!” Thus began
Szyhalski involvement in on-the-ground protest movements for several
other local protest movements in the years to come.

[Protesters in Minneapolis hold up a banner that reads "Justice for
Jamar!" made by Piotr Szyhalski.]

Protesters in Minneapolis hold up a banner that reads “Justice for
Jamar!” made by Piotr Szyhalski. Photo by AP Photo/Jim Mone.

A COLLECTIVE APPROACH TO ART

Szyhalski explains to _Workday Magazine_ how this shift in his
practice then opened up questions of traditional notions of authorship
in his work. Not only would he allow the organizers to decide the
text, he also began to invite them and their families into his studio
to produce the enormous banners alongside him, creating an intimate
moment of shared creation and connection. Szyhalski described these
collaborations as a “moment of ownership, authorship shifting, away
from me and becoming more of a kind of a collective.”  

This more democratic approach to art is not only seen through the
shift in authorship, but also in how the artist leaves copies of the
posters in a box in the gallery for viewers to take for free. During a
time when so much art is monetized and kept away from the public,
Szyhalski’s impulse to reach the masses with his messages is
unfortunately rare in fine-art settings, and all the more refreshing.
Instead of maintaining the notion of scarcity as a means to signal
value and elitism, the artist insists on delivering his work to the
public sphere. Had my coworker not brought a poster back to the
office, I possibly would not have had this encounter in the first
place. 

This collectivist approach to authorship, along with the public
viewership that is inherent to the medium of posters and banners,
allows for significantly more flux in the meaning to the work—and,
as Szyhalski notes, the work “continues to mutate its own form.”
As time goes on, as different crises wax and wane and compound, as
terror, war, and disease rage on, his work will continue to dissect
and detangle the moment, while shapeshifting itself in the process. 

_Isabela Escalona began working with Labor Education Service and
Workday Magazine in 2022. She grew up in Oak Park, Illinois and earned
her B.A. from Macalester College in St. Paul in International Studies.
Isabela worked as a Communications Organizer at Centro de Trabajadores
Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) in Minneapolis for three years. Along with
her professional work, Isabela has a shared art studio in St. Paul
where she works on short films, photographs, and other artistic
projects. She enjoys watching movies, reading, bike rides, hiking
Minnesota’s beautiful landscapes year-round, exploring antique
stores, and spending time with loved ones._

_Workday Magazine holds the powerful to account while bringing the
perspectives of everyday workers, and the organizations that defend
their rights, to focus. We emphasize long-form investigative
journalism to unearth the concealed and buried. Our publication is
based in Minnesota and covers the greater Midwest, along with
international issues that affect workers, like climate change and U.S.
militarism._

_Workday Magazine fulfills the mission of the Labor Education Service
at the University of Minnesota
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providing a public outlet to examine the conditions that workers face
on a day-to-day basis. We began publishing in the summer of 2000 with
support from Minnesota’s labor community. We were the first online
labor news publication in the United States._

* Artists
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* revolutionary art
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* Propaganda
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* cultural workers
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* Pandemic
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