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Matthew Prenter

Professor Hu

Labour Studies 101

November 20th, 2023

Labour Art Analysis:

“Et Hoc Quod Nos Nescimus” - Cian Dayrit (2018)

https://nomegallery.com/artwork/et-hoc-quod-nos-nescimus/

Cian Dayrit art piece “Et Hoc Quod Nos Nescimus'' is a subtle, clever, and beautiful

critique imposed on western labour and economic markets, as well as the ignorance and apathy

displayed by these privileged and powerful countries and their continued exploitation of the
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global south. This piece serves to raise awareness to the prevalent issues of an increasingly

Neo-Liberal society, the struggle of the global south, and the strength and solidarity the workers

of the global south harness. Utilising his own deep-rooted connections with workers in the

Philippines, Dayrit challenges the consumers of his artworks to reflect on and understand their

own complacency with the changing global markets and their strength to dismantle these

systems. By casting spotlight on this critical issue, viewers are prodded to confront their own

biases and take the stand for a more equitable global society.

The piece depicts a map of the world flipped upside down to portray the global south at

the top, with the shadows of large militant and exporting ships cast across the seas. The advent of

flipping the map upside down reflects on how “the world is seen through a European lens and the

agency of non-European peoples is downplayed or silenced” (Padella, 148). This is especially

true as seen through the exploitation of the global south for its labour resources. Immigrant

workers from non-American or western-European countries are vital pillars of neoliberal

economies, as the system itself actively distances itself from morality or human wellbeing in

favour of upholding and inflating the economy. Despite the importance of migrant work coming

from the global south, the rich nations that employ them do not fairly compensate them for the

labour they provide, and instead wave the advent of a life within their richer nation in front of the

workers' faces in order to win their complacency, as well as providing them with substandard

wages that are still able to compete with the wages earned from their country of origin. These

workers are completely disposable to the nations that employ them, but even such the “need and

demand for such “temporary” migrants has become permanent.” (McLaughlin 81) and the scale

that the migration of international labour will increase to will only result further in the
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dehumanisation of foreigners. Within these systems of cheap migrant labour there is rampant

racism that comes as a direct result of capitalist labour movement, “Jamaican farmworkers are

highly rated for their ability to work harder than their counterparts from Mexico or the Eastern

Caribbean” (McLaughlin, 84) and as such the workers are further removed from their humanity,

being reduced to their country of origin by the nations that utilise their labour. These deep

wounds inflicted by neo-liberalism on the working class of the global south are not fully

recognized by the populus, as “Today, more than three decades after neoliberalism began, many

are tempted to bow down in thanks that they still have a job.” (Stanford, 48) rather than turn their

attention to the continued exploitation of those fending to survive. The exploitation of migrant

workers also raises another alarm for the protection and future of labour rights. As governments

continually reach their hand into the cookie jar of cheap, expendable, and abundant labour

coming from the global south they have begun to lose their footing on hiding the full depth of the

game that is being played from the general public. There has been a perceived upwards trend of

typically big city populations moving further left, and as such the tolerance for government

misdemeanour dwindles, and rightfully so. As such, the labour market experienced a drastic shift

in the way it presents itself, trying to highlight the strength of an ethnically, racially, and gender

diverse workforce. While this sounds like nothing but a good thing on paper, and is certainly a

step in the right direction for dismantling colonial violence that finds itself in labour market, its

creates an entirely new problem of selling that diversity, “the focus on economic rationalism has

rendered a profoundly narrow vision of diversity, which is basically a selling-out of an agenda

based on pursuing substantive equality for those marginalised by race/ethnicity, gender, and

class.” (Laban and Gabriel p173). As labour markets begin to package and sell this diversity, it

creates a veil to hide the further exploitation of the same marginilized groups of people that they
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try to highlight. All that has been done, metaphorically, is placing a bandaid on a much deeper

wound.

The same governments that are continually reliant on migrant labour to uphold their

economies also love to falsely preach about the perceived benefits of their migrant labour

programs. “Despite the insistence of international bodies and governments regarding the alleged

positive effects of migration and remittances as detonators of development in countries of origin,

there is no empirical evidence to warrant this assumption.” (Wise, 39). If anything, the use of

migrant labour could be detrimental to the development of the countries of origin. The nations

that are exploited for their workers will begin to develop a reliance on the larger nation

employing their people, and as such there grows a frailty in the government, where the

government loses its own autonomy and begins finding itself increasingly indebted to a much

larger nation, and often that larger nation is capable of exploiting their debt in a variety of ways.

There is also the problem of diverting labour away from the countries of origin that arises from

this system of borrowed labour. Though in many instances the countries that export their labour

suffer from the problem of having too many able bodied workers relative to the amount of work

available to the population, this is not the primary issue that comes from this system. When a

country sends migrant workers to a richer nation the labour that is provided is disproportionate to

the wages earned by workers in two major ways, not only are the workers subjected to hard

labour under what are often strict conditions, far stricter than the working conditions of the

average worker within a wealthy or further-developed nation, but the work that is provided

grows the infrastructure of the richer nation, or increases resources, or resource production. In

any case the work provided by the workers contributes to a snowballing economic increase.
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While the rich nation continues to gain economic surplus from the labour they purchased, the

nation that provided the labour is only met with temporary and minute economic gain. While it is

beneficial to have more money passing hands within the market of a country, little of this money

will ever see its way to the government, and as such this economic gain is futile in government

interest to reinvest into the economy by creating a larger job economy, and as such continues the

cycle of the parasocial exchange between nations. There also exists the exchange of social

binaries between these nations that strengthens western colonial violence on a wider global net.

Most every worker being exchanged between countries is of the male gender, which in turn

strengthens the capitalist and colonialist division of gendered labour. “It was colonialism or

capitalism or both that were responsible for introducing gender inequality" (Deere and Leon, 51)

and both are still finding ways to instil their values into untapped nations. The division of

gendered labour only serves as a detriment to the growth and strength of a country and their

economy.

Though simple in nature, Cian Dayrit's piece “Ad Hoc Quod Nos Nescimus” provides an

amazingly nuanced and articulate commentary on the violence imposed on labour markets by

Neo-Liberal societies. Dayrit combines underlying and prominent features in this piece to usher

the viewer into a thought stream of complex analysis on what it speaks upon. The piece

brandishes deep blood reds and a string of barbed wire wrapping a map where the only borders

displayed are those separating primarily white, capitalist countries from their neighbours,

signifying the violence of colonial border systems. The pyramids seen on the back of the

American dollar dot the edges of the piece and scrawled across is a latin sentence translating to

“Neo-Liberal Capitalism and the World as we know it”, and though there are slim to no latin
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speakers around, “Novu-Liberalismus Capitismus” is unmistakable from its english translation.

This piece is lovingly and meticulously constructed by an artist deeply rooted with political

ideations that favour the working class peoples of the world and delivers strongly on starting the

commentary that it sets out to create.

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Bibliography___________________________________________________________________

Deere, C. D., & Leon, M. (2001). Institutional Reform of Agriculture under neoliberalism:

The Impact of the Women’s and Indigenous Movements. JSTOR.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2692087

Laban, Y. A., & Gabriel, C. (2013). Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism,

Employment Equity and Globalization. Selling (Out) Diversity in an Age of Globalization,

165–180. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442602274-007

McLaughlin, J. (2012). Mexican and Jamaican transnational farmworkers in Canada.

Classifying the “Ideal Migrant Worker”: Mexican and Jamaican Transnational

Farmworkers in Canada, 119–141. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203116494-12

Stanford, J. (2012). Economics for everyone: A short guide to the economics of Capitalism.

Economic Class, 41–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816812444828n

Wise, R. D. (2015). Migration and labour under neoliberal globalization. (C. U. Schierup,

R. Munck, B. L. Brboric, & A. Neergaard, Eds.).Migration, Precarity, and Global

Governance, 25–45. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198728863.003.0002

Predella, L. (2017, February). Marx and the Global South. JSTOR.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26940351