This is my most recent project for my VISA 250 printmaking course. After I printed an edition of three on paper, I printed five t-shirts from my carved wooden board. I named this project The Stifling Modern Fetishism. 

I was inspired and astonished by the cruel living environment of the sweatshop in developing countries. The globalized operation and manufacturing of goods today bring job opportunities to these countries’ workers, while these opportunities are highly associated with inhumane and toxic working conditions. As a Chinese girl who read about the high-frequency suicides in Foxconn, Shenzhen, the biggest Apple manufacturer in the world, I felt the urgency to uncover the struggles of developing world workers (mostly female) behind the shiny new iPhones and other commodities.

Interestingly, most people see this project as a critique of people playing with their phones all day long in all places without caring about the ongoing events nearby, like humans are controlled by phones. I also like this interpretation and find in both cases, our obsession to commodities, in this case, phones, lead to detrimental effects. Therefore I name this project as The Stifling Modern Fetishism.