Plantation… in All its Meanings
A necessary reminder of just how much Britain depends on love and labour from immigrants, and a warning of the dangers of exploitation and extraction – everywhere.
Rehana Zaman’s exhibition at the Site Gallery is full of flavour, one that you journey deep into a ‘cinema’ seat in the middle of the space to get your teeth stuck into.
Available for consumption are delicate sculptures and two documentaries that explore the use of modern industrial farms, labour, the relationship between extraction, loss and profit, as well as the precarious natures of work and home.
Through sometimes tender and sometimes angry conversation in both films between the “Filmmaker” and “Worker 1”, “2” or “3”, who are seasonal workers, sharecroppers, tenants or day labourers, we witness a depletion of land and worker. I note the dispassionate non-naming captions as intentional – one of many clever metaphors throughout both films.
Sound is also incredibly important to both. The picking of strawberries by Luo (Kenyan) women in the first film entitled ‘Soft Fruit’. The squelching sound of cucumber pickers in the second film called ‘Jo Kherray so Khaey’. The unsettling and frequent sound of engines rattling as metaphor for the tirelessness of work. Similar themes can be found in the jarring and dissonant cuts between and within scenes, the use of different visual aesthetics makes things a little uncomfortable.
