Images and Texts of Labor in China - A Thirty Year History (1993-2023)

Since 2016, the China labor collection at Kheel Center in the ILR School’s Catherwood Library, has amassed a vast audio-visual archive consisting of photographs, films, brochures, oral interviews, poetry, and other materials on labor in the People’s Republic of China between the years 1993-2023. This exhibition is a curation of this invaluable collection, made available for the first time to the Cornell and greater Ithaca community. Come and learn about the multifaceted lives of China’s workers: their struggles, their efforts to determine their own working conditions through strikes and protests, and their self-expression in the form of documentation, poems, videos and more.

Acknowledgements: Cornell Kheel Center, ILR School; Department of Asian Studies; The East Asia Program; Department of History of Art & Visual Studies; the China Asia Pacific Studies Program; and the Asian Labor Institute

Sat, Nov 14

1pm: Exhibit opens

5pm: Opening Reception

6pm: Opening Roundtable: “Thirty Years of Chinese Labor”

(with Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Shaoling Ma, Xiangzi, and A-Gan)

Mon, Nov 16

4pm: Guest Speaker and Curated Tour on Labor Photography with Gaochao He, Visiting Lecturer at UMBC Shady Grove, “Images of the Workplace: Two Weeks Before A Steel Mill Closed Down”

Tues, Nov 17

12:30-1:15pm: Guided tour

Weds, Nov 18

12:15-1:30pm: Guided tour and “life-as-a-migrant-worker” game with Kevin Lin

Thurs, Nov 19

12:30-1:15pm: Guided tour

4:45pm: Guest speaker: Professor Nick Admussen (Asian Studies) on contemporary Chinese workers’ poetry

Fri, Nov 20

5pm: Documentary screening of We Were Smart

Exhibit closes