Mel Chin’s installation transforms the seats of office chairs into a contemplative field of portraits. Removed from their bases, each seat, mounted tombstone-like, bears the image of a skull. The arrangement traces the arc of a workday, beginning at nine in the morning and progressing hour by hour toward five in the evening as light moves across the installation. The passage of time becomes both structure and subject, echoing the rhythm of labor that once filled these chairs. Chin draws on the tradition of the memento mori, images that remind viewers of mortality while also honoring lives that came before us. The skulls evoke the many anonymous workers who once occupied chairs like these. Often, women working in offices during the mid to late twentieth century typed, recorded, organized, and maintained the everyday systems that supported modern life. Their labor formed the quiet infrastructure of business, communication, and administration, yet it frequently remained unseen.
Chin imagines the interior lives that may have unfolded within these workplaces. Each skull suggests a different presence, hinting at personalities, relationships, and private thoughts that existed alongside routine tasks. Some appear contemplative, others tense or animated, evoking the subtle social dynamics that shape shared environments of work. The installation invites viewers to consider the unseen emotional and psychological worlds that accompany repetitive labor. The structures supporting the works are fabricated from bits of dismantled office chairs, repurposing their legs, bases, and structural components, and painted the off-white color of bones. Materials once designed to support the body are reconfigured to hold its symbolic trace. The worn surfaces of the seats carry what Chin describes as the “patina of effort,” marks left by years of use that speak to the persistence of human activity.
The work’s title, Hauntology of Their Labor, references philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology: the idea that the past continues to inhabit the present through traces, absences, and unresolved histories. In Chin’s installation, the ghostly presence of workers lingers in the objects they once occupied. Though their names and stories remain unknown, their labor continues to shape the systems that structure contemporary life. At a moment when automation and artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming the nature of work, Chin’s installation asks viewers to reflect on the human histories embedded within everyday systems. By reducing the figures to bone, he removes markers of identity while emphasizing a shared human condition. The installation becomes both memorial and meditation, honoring the dignity of labor while acknowledging the countless lives whose contributions quietly sustain the world we inherit and depend upon.
– Rhys Munro, Residencies and Exhibitions Manager
