Working While Working
Xchanges Gallery, Victoria, BC, Canada, 2018.
Working While Working (2018). Digital loop, projected. Four remote audio channels.
The mundane actions of our daily lives hide the personal tectonics of our internal, emotional lives.
Working While Working is a filmed performance of on-the-clock labour by the artist, paired respectively with music by local folk artist Cosy Father and an autobiographical monologue by German Ocampo Salazar. It was created at a time in the artist’s life when his creative practice had been all but consumed by more demanding aspects of life: work, family, financial need. Working While Working and another piece, No Repeat Workday, became the solution: a way to make art while earning a paycheque.
This installation honours the mental battles creators fight to make art and make a living simultaneously, and celebrates the dramatic retelling of internal personal struggles through art in its various forms.