The Artist
In Collaboration with Robb Fladry
Public Art Video Installation 2009
Lights on Tampa Satellite Project
In Collaboration with Robb Fladry
Public Art Video Installation 2009
Lights on Tampa Satellite Project
| "The Artist" This public art project will consist of a rear-video-projection onto a storefront window of hands rolling cigars. Simultaneously, there will be an audio element of the news and literature being read in Spanish by a single voice. The history of Tampa is long and varied, and includes the civil war, Spanish American war, and English colonial rule. One of the most defining moments in Tampa's history however was the cigar industry. With the fire of 1886 in Key West, Tampa's population almost doubled as the cigar industry took off. Rolling cigars by the "tabaqueros" (tobacco rollers) was not simply a manual job. "The 'torcedores' who rolled the finished cigars, especially, thought of themselves as "more of an artist than a worker." The tabaqueros brought from Cuba the tradition of "El Lector," a highly intelligent and educated reader to break the monotony of the trade. El lectors read to the workers while perched on an elevated platform in the cigar factory. This public art-work harks back to this honorable trade. Showing a manual task on this scale, and repeated, highlights the means of production. In contemporary culture, manual labor is not respected as much as white-collar labor. Tabaqueros were artists, respected and educated. Sadly, during the Great Depression, the readers were removed from the workplace, stripping the workers of access to news, and thus their sense of agency. A larger than life projection of the hands honors this manual trade and expresses the strength and tactility of the task of rolling cigars. The voice as "El Lector" reveals the curiosity, intelligence and engagement of the Cuban, Italian and American workers. |