Hat (2019) and Rythm (2019) uses the bowler hat and salt to explore exploitation, labour, and memory. The work is set in a 19th-century factory building, and the lack of colour makes it seem as though you are stepping into the time period in which the exploitation of the working class was taking place.
The hat symbolizes the period of rapid mechanical industrialization and societal changes during the later 19th century; pairing this object with salt over the hat rather systematically references the monotonous rhythm of factory work. As we understand the salt as a reference to blood, tears and sweat – these two objects paired showcase how the factory had dehumanized the working class into simple statistics to enrich the already wealthy.
Rhythm (2019), however, takes the hat and salt and places these hats in a fashion that seems as though they’re on a conveyor within a factory. How they are placed seems to remove the humanity from the workers, as though their individuality has been removed through mass production. They have been reduced to simply a cog within the factory to create profits for the factory owner.