Concept

On his visit to the archive of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), Jankowski came across a photograph depicting a woman’s manicured hand holding a metal drill bit. Siqueiros, a committed communist, took the photograph himself. It unintentionally portrays the gap between the working class (symbolized by the drill bit) and the bourgeoisie (represented by the hand of a materialistic woman wearing jewelry). It was not intended to be an artwork, but simply served as a study of a drill bit. Inspired by the photograph, Jankowski created to the Bourgeois Working Class, a sculpture that highlights the contradictions within one artist‘s conception of political ideology: Siqueiros was radical enough to try to assassinate Trotsky, but he lived near movie stars in a luxurious home studio. He denounced capitalists in his murals, but he allowed them to support his art production. Jankowski created this sculpture on the occasion of his solo exhibition Crying for the March of Humanity at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS) in Mexico City, an art center located in Siqueiros’s former studio and home.

Sculpture

Cardboard, wood, PVC, plastic, paint, polyurethane, foam, resin, 3.48 m (height), 60 x 200 x 200 cm (base), edition of 3, II