Sweatshop Girls whirligig
US$1,500
Sweatshop Girls whirligig, 1999
wood, acrylic, barbed wire, stuffed toy
19" high x 26" wide x 15" deep
Sweatshop Girls illustrates the child labor that is employed, at pennies
per day, in intolerably harsh conditions, to produce the icons of a happy,
carefree childhood that are relentlessly marketed as the birthright of
every American child. The main figure is shown assembling a Mickey
Mouse doll, while other sweatshop-produced toys, Disney's Little Mermaid,
Sesame Street's Ernie and Elmo, Barbie, Barney the purple dinosaur, Power
Rangers, and Winnie the Pooh, are arrayed around the whirligig's propeller.
On the whirligig's tail, some of the distant corporate masters on whose
behalf the faceless sweatshop girls toil are identified by their familiar
corporate logos as Disney, Tyco, Mattel, Playskool, Fisher-Price, Wal-Mart,
and Nike.
[e-mail me] [Ross
the artist] [Gallery]