The Feline Stare: Analyzing Carmen Argote: gajes del oficio

With trembling hands and falling tears, I sprinted down the stairs clutching onto my fabric snag like it was the end of the world. I ran into my mother’s room, presenting to her the failed remnants of my first sewing project. 

The process did not start off smoothly whatsoever; the needle of the sewing machine broke, the thread kept getting caught and my excitement dwindled as each hour went by with little progress. My final straw was realizing I had sewn the back of the blouse completely backwards when I flipped the garment inside out, leaving me feeling completely defeated.

My mom assured me that it would be fine, as she took the blouse and split each thread to remove the back. She pointed out that it was my first time creating such a piece; snags were bound to happen. Nodding in agreement, I grabbed the two pieces and ran back to my room with newfound confidence. I eagerly sewed both sides correctly, feeling a renewed sense of hope again as I finally completed a wearable shirt. From this moment on, I learned that developing new skills always comes with snags, especially with being on my own in college.

In my second month of college, I visited Carmen Argote’s Exhibition: gajes del oficio at Pitzer College. I walked into the first gallery, the Lenzer Gallery, awestruck by all the different jumpsuits created with intricate designs and colors. One had dragon fruits, another was adorned with abstract faces collaged along the body. I weaved my way through the garments, arriving at a pantsuit deconstructed on a table — a sight quite familiar to me from my own sewing endeavors. There, the artist Argote and her mother explained that the piece was about more than just the art of sewing; it underscored the snags of the trade –– the translation of the exhibition title –– that comes with the social, cultural and physical challenges that laborers must work through in the sewing industry. 

This exhibition brings attention to the challenges people face when engaging in a manual trade. Argote focuses on two different gendered labors, citrus farming and sewing, within Southern California. She addresses the demanding nature of these labors, where expectations are placed on female workers to perform perfection. 

Argote ties in her family history of migration to California to illustrate how sewing was transformed between her, her grandmother and her mother. She uses fabrics embedded with her cultural history to create pantsuits, tying themes of overproduction of material goods with the abstraction of a pantsuit that holds decaying citrus fruits. In this way, her work symbolizes the bodies of laborers who are constantly overworked to create goods that consumers take for granted.

Sewing has become a gendered labor that consists of unfavorable working conditions and low pay, directly exploiting women’s bodies to produce garments for consumers. Sewing was once a way of survival for Argote’s mother and grandmother, but became a creative outlet that is now a source of pride she carries with her. Her garments, while on the outside display her creativeness, hold a deep history of reclaiming the art of sewing within her family.

What makes this exhibition so different from most, is its extension to another gallery. We followed the artist through the outside and into Nichols Gallery at Pitzer, where visitors are introduced to a large, deconstructed garment that stretches from the ceiling to floor. Its coral color and sheer material holds lemons frozen into spheres. Powerful in its smell and locally-sourced from the Claremont area, the lemons slowly drip onto citrus-activated dye. 

Here, I was confronted with the idea of overconsumption and objectification that feeds off of women’s bodies. This representation of the female jumpsuit is abstracted, one we cannot wear, but instead that we are forced to examine the intricacy of its parts and their meanings. The intricacy of the abstraction reminds us of the exhausting labor that drains the life from those struggling to survive. I felt a personal responsibility to reclaim snags in the sewing industry and transform them into art, to highlight what often is unseen.

 Listening to the artist’s commentary elevated the experience even more as we got to hear her personal story. Argote described how her mother, Carmen Vargas, migrated from Mexico to Los Angeles to work as a seamstress, a skill she learned from Argote’s grandmother. 

Hearing Argote speak about her family history made me see parallels in my own life. My grandmother learned sewing from her family as her brother and sister-in-law owned a blanket store in South Korea. She and her siblings watched their mother stitch each piece by hand. At that time, many families depended on every able hand, so all members in my grandmother’s family sewed. South Korea lacked labor laws, so unreasonable conditions and expectations were placed on young workers, including my grandmother. 

When she migrated from South Korea to the United States, she worked in the sewing industry in Virginia to provide for my grandfather and my mother. She worked with a majority of other Korean women, where they formed a family-like community. During this time, my mother would sit with my grandmother as she sewed, admiring her every move. My grandmother would go step by step with my mother, patiently helping if she ran into a snag. 

My mother followed the same process of creating. While growing up, she showered my sister and I with blankets and clothes for our dolls. It was not until last year that I wanted to learn the art of sewing, and my mother helped me significantly. What I began to realize with sewing was how much it transformed when being passed down through generations. My grandmother used it as a way to survive and provide, sewing a blanket of knowledge that was passed down from her to my mother, who reclaimed her livelihood as a creative form. Subsequently, she passed the blanket down to me, which I now use as an art form to reclaim the history of labor in my family.

Looking through this exhibition reminded me of all the skills we learn from our families. We’ve not only learned trades, but also life lessons. Now hundreds of miles away at college, I am left to teach myself. I cannot run to my mother down the stairs, or down the street to my grandmother if I ever run into a challenge. I have learned to appreciate the labor that my family has gone through to be able to send me off on my own, to be able to have the opportunity to see exhibitions by astounding artists like Carmen Argote, and move forward with the generational knowledge and power that sewing holds.

Meiya Rollins PO ’29 believes, like Michelangelo, that art takes time – most of that time being snack breaks and watching “Good Mythical Morning.”