Petra Hultman

My grandparents' work and mine

Installation consists of my grandparents’ large production of craft. Living in the rural parts of Småland with an imperative to be diligent they both produced huge amounts of craft, textile from my grandmother and wooden key cabinets from my grandfather. In different installations I put my own labor as an artist in relation to their labor and craft. An ongoing investigation of time, labor and value. A videoprologue, recorded in my grandparents kitchen in 2011 where I speak with them about art, education and memories is sometimes installed together with the objects. Grandpa Hilding is 15 years old when he first is employed. He works for 0,15SEK an hour, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week before he walks home to help his parents at the farm. When he, at age 85, no longer can find paid work he instead starts to manufacture key cabinets in his garage. He cuts the material into pieces, mills them, sands them and mounts them into cabinet after cabinet. He does not sell them but continues to work anyhow. Hundreds of cabinets are packaged into cartridges and stored in the basement. He joins Mary in the home for coffee at eleven, lunch, coffee at four and dinner before the news start on TV. Grandma Mary does diligent needlework with a desire for perfection already in her early years. Always after someone else’s patter which she follows to the letter. She takes care of the home, does the laundry, the dishes, the bed, the cleaning, the baking, and makes sure there is coffee, cinnamon buns, sandwiches and food ready for eleven o’clock, lunch, four o’clock and dinner when Hilding comes in to eat. In between she sits with her needlework at hands “even while I wait for the potatoes to boil”, she says. She is knitting squares for a blanket. Stacks them in piles and keeps on knitting. She has calculated how many she has to knit every day in order to be done by Christmas. # time <-> work <-> value, production, class, labour, craft <-> art, appropriation, installation, material and immaterial labour