JEAN JASPER GRUIS
As a disabled and neurodivergent non-binary photographer, they find refuge in analogue photography, especially medium-format film, because it fosters a practice anchored in the moment. This documentary mode represents a stubborn immersion in a slow burn process despite a world fixated on fast time and rapid productivity. They have a kinship with the discarded, the slow, the cumbersome. (Bonus: they get to be a doctor for sick and ill camera lenses and bring them back to life!)
Their artistic interests also include queer portraiture, the rhythms of the everyday, and the idiosyncrasies of the mundane. The things you only notice when you slow down, look CLOSELY, and SHUT your eyes.
︎ WORKS IN PROGRESS ︎
INTIMACIES
OF
LABOUR
(working title)
2020 -
(ongoing)
The broom was signed "King." I found my focus on it in the midday glare, amused by its rebellious mimicry of the power laden in the housing projects going up all about. The shutter clunks loudly in the still lunch hour, and something twitches in my viewfinder. I look up, blinking. It takes a bit for my eyes to adjust to spot the work boots peeping out from the wall, trying to get comfortable. Did I just disturb someone’s nap?
These moments of intimacy amidst labour are the subject of this work. Who builds these spaces, and who are they for? I document the transient presence of labour on construction sites in Mosselbay, South Africa. The work memorialises labour as it’s converted into summer houses for the rich and white on one side of the national highway and housing projects for the black and poor on the other, a lethargic attempt to address the country’s housing crisis. These sites will become someone's home, someone's intimate space, but this multi-year project traces how these places are already intimate, already personal.
These moments of intimacy amidst labour are the subject of this work. Who builds these spaces, and who are they for? I document the transient presence of labour on construction sites in Mosselbay, South Africa. The work memorialises labour as it’s converted into summer houses for the rich and white on one side of the national highway and housing projects for the black and poor on the other, a lethargic attempt to address the country’s housing crisis. These sites will become someone's home, someone's intimate space, but this multi-year project traces how these places are already intimate, already personal.
There are jackets and bags gingerly placed at height in futile attempts to minimise dust exposure; plastic wrapped around hard-handled shovels for comfort; each plasterer’s way of application becomes recognisable mark-making; cinder blocks fashioned into seats, planks into beds; cigarette packets mapping where breaks were taken; a board of bottlecaps for checkers.
My work explores these patterns of racialised labour under sorely exploited conditions alongside the rhythms of the reproductive work needed to create personal dignity. It shows how the workers create their own spaces even as their labour is constructing property for the powerful. Construction sites are typically rendered as brute male labour, but I bring a queer lens to document how tenderness and domesticity are found in these heartlands of masculinised work. Subverting the language of architectural and commercial photography, my work unveils who made the space rather than comically trying to hide it.
My work explores these patterns of racialised labour under sorely exploited conditions alongside the rhythms of the reproductive work needed to create personal dignity. It shows how the workers create their own spaces even as their labour is constructing property for the powerful. Construction sites are typically rendered as brute male labour, but I bring a queer lens to document how tenderness and domesticity are found in these heartlands of masculinised work. Subverting the language of architectural and commercial photography, my work unveils who made the space rather than comically trying to hide it.