Curator, Jodi Hauptman: We're looking at three drawings for a worker's club by Elena Semenova.
In those early years of the Soviet Union, there's this idea of building something new and bringing everyone in. And the worker's club was part of that. They were often attached to factories and they were meant to kind of extend the collective experience of work into the realm of leisure. And, so, they were spaces to read, to rest, to eat, and to teach.
I love in those little boxes, where you can imagine the workers coming in and changing their clothes and putting their dirty work clothes in those little cubbies. And then they can go sit down and relax. It's a very light-filled space. There's no clutter. There's no ornament. That attentiveness to how details can transform your lived experience is so important here. And I think it's shared by many of the artists in this room, who were really thinking about different models of living.
I think sometimes we think of citizenry as the act of voting or working for a political cause. But a worker's club shows us being an active citizen extends to every part of what you do.