Step into the Sweatshop: A Cultural Gathering for Kentex 72

On May 13, 2015, a fire at the Kentex slipper factory in Valenzuela City, Manila left 72 workers dead. This incident underscores the conditions Filipino labor faces daily: including contractual work, low wages, unfair employment practices and hazardous working conditions. We say no to more deaths and continuing exploitation. To mark the 100th day of the tragedy on August 21, we will converge in a cultural gathering (public art exhibit/workshop/performances) and join families and colleagues of the Kentex 72 to reflect on the situation and renew the clamour for solidarity and justice. Artists support the need for living wages, better working conditions, and sustainable jobs for Filipino workers. They are the people who build the homes we live in; who manufacture the clothes we wear; who make the slippers that we use. We enjoin more people to resist forgetting and to look into the broader phenomenon of labor exploitation, persisting in the Philippines and around the globe. Text from Concerned Artists of the Philippines.

Together with CAP members, artist-students and

volunteers, we showed the victim’s family, the survivors, and other participants how art can serve as instruments to voice out what they feel. WALA assisted in teaching basic drawing, painting and print-making with old slippers as the material to work on. They were encouraged to carve images that represent how they felt about the tragic event. Most of them created symbols of hope for a better life and plea for justice. The resulting works together with that of artist-students were installed on a wall on Kentex factory. We also took the initiative to make a banner of used slippers which we encouraged the people to write the name of the lost loved ones and their messages.

Photos courtesy of Concerned Artists of the Philippines.