The aim of “Bringing Work Out of Its Nights “* is to open the way for a cross-disciplinary reflection on the notion of invisibility. It’s about invisible work, about globalised mechanisms that are omnipresent and structuring yet remain opaque, and about voices that fail to make themselves heard, remaining inaudible in the public sphere. It is also a question of broadening the horizon to examine the phenomena of disappearance and erasure through a more aesthetic, philosophical and poetic lens.

Punctuated by abstract or metaphorical incursions, ghostly or enigmatic presences, and words chanted to remedy a lack of representation, the exhibition unfolds along three thematic axes: women’s work and care, globalised trade where the movement of goods and the migration of beings intersect, and dematerialised digital work and its new forms of hidden exploitation.

These are all fields that reactivate the problem of social invisibility that Jacques Rancière addressed over twenty years ago when he spokes of “the struggle of proletarians to bring labour out of its night – from its exclusion from common visibility and speech “**, a struggle that still resonates strongly today with current political events.

* The second part of a series devoted to contemporary work, this exhibition follows on from “Variables d’épanouissement”, devoted to happiness at work and presented in Tours at the ccc od from 23 July 2021 to 27 February 2022.

** Jacques Rancière, Le Partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique , Paris, La Fabrique, 2000, p.72