Sweatshop Girls whirligig

US$1,500

Sweatshop Girls whirligig

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.


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