CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee — The Amazon workers’ strike of 2024, the United Auto Workers general strike and SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023, the New Museum unionization of 2019 — the list goes on and on. One of the defining characteristics of the 2010s and ’20s thus far is the dramatic increase in unionization efforts and strikes — a boon for proletariat workers, which Tabitha Arnold’s exhibition Gospel of the Working Class embraces in earnest.
This show consists of rugs eulogizing contemporary labor strikes, such as “These Hands” (all works 2024), which depicts the 2023 United Auto Workers general strike. Created with punch needle embroidery, a meticulous, hand-worked process, these rugs are tightly woven, highly saturated textiles that borrow the visual language and style of social realism, calling to mind artists like Faith Ringgold and Elizabeth Catlett. In “Mill Town,” the use of horizontal stratifications both orders the composition and mimics the assembly line work of modern textile manufacturing. The simplified human figures within this piece carry banners, slogans to rally around. As my eye bounced energetically over the fiery-faced figures, a similarly optimistic flame kindled within my heart.
The integration of contemporary labor strikes within the visual language of social realism creates a narrative arc that asserts that these efforts are not anomalies but rather regularities. This effort is furthered by Arnold’s presentation of archival materials alongside the textiles. Chattanooga’s specific labor history is seen via photographs, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, posters, and other ephemera mined from the university’s archives, such as a ribbon reading “IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH” from a 1908 Labor Day demonstration. Not only are these struggles continually relevant in the history of the United States, Arnold shows us, but they are immediate to the local community.
Many of the movements of the early 20th century, such as Suprematism, Surrealism, and Cubism, explored the immaterial, the subconscious, and the “purely” aesthetic. Social realism, which rose in the United States in the 1920s and ’30s, following the First World War, was an anchor, pulling people out of the clouds and back down to earth, where hundreds of thousands of people had just died in a continental conflict. Arnold’s mix of subject and style does well to historicize these contemporary labor movements, serving as records of these moments. But art in the contemporary moment hardly needs help grounding itself in reality — in the age of social media, witnessing is forced upon us. This is not to say that art should abandon its grounding and lean into escapism — but it’s beginning to feel like witnessing is no longer enough.
Tabitha Arnold: Gospel of the Working Class continues at the Institute of Contemporary Art Chattanooga at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (752 Vine Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee) through March 8. The exhibition was organized by the institution.
