Documents of Contemporary Art: Work

Edited by Friederike Sigler

Recommended by: Ebenezer Nketsiah Mensah, 2026 In-House Resident.

Book Description: Warhol’s Factory of the 1960s, Minimalism’s assembly-line aesthetics, conceptual and feminist concern with workers’ conditions in the 1970s – these are among the antecedents of a renewed focus on the work of art: labour as artistic activity, method and engagement. This anthology explicitly investigates work in relation to contemporary art, surveying artistic strategies that grapple with the complexities of being an art worker in the new economy, a postproducer, a collaborator, a fabricator, a striker, an ethical campaigner, or would-be transformer of labour from oppression to liberation.