Junaina Valappil, in her body of work “Are you being served enough?” investigates the boundaries where labour and value cross and converge. Through photography and videography, she studies and enquires into the working conditions of hospitality workers, particularly focusing on low-paid migrant workers.
The series examines themes such as class, exploitation, emotional and physical labour, value, authority, and political domesticity. Leveraging the nuances of bodily expressions, postures, kinetics, and symbolic motifs, the artist endeavors to encapsulate the manifold struggles of workers as they navigate the delicate equilibrium between resilience and endurance. Through a deliberate juxtaposition of static and kinetic visual renditions, Valappil methodically constructs simulacra that mimic the workplace routines of waitresses/waiters predominantly to capture elements such as responsibility, emotional/physical exhaustion, power dynamics, and hierarchy.
The creative impetus of this piece finds its wellspring in the artist's own experiences and this oeuvre emerges as an earnest attempt to channel a shared sense of solidarity with the multitude of hospitality workers who grapple with prolonged shifts with short periods of breaks, poor pay, wage theft, bullying, and numerous other workplace abuses.
