The sculptural installation The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin addresses feminized labor and workplace inequality. Investigating the joint deindustrialization of the economy and deregulation of the labor market, Doruntina Kastrati encounters the (im)material forms of precarious employment in light industries in the aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo War.

The gendered labor in industries like food production has rendered women economically vulnerable and pushed them to the political margins. Kastrati’s project engages with the experiences of female workers of a Turkish delight factory in Prizren, Kosovo. In part because the factory’s employees perform their work from a standing position, nearly one third of them undergo knee replacement surgery. The metal objects implanted in their knees are material traces of their long working hours yielding little pay. The longer the shift, the larger the accumulation of unpaid labor.

Activated by sound, the sculptures build a distinctive rhythm in the exhibition space. Made from aluminum, they simultaneously allude to surgical implants and industrial manufacturing. Through her choice of materials, Kastrati recreates the machinic coldness of the Turkish delight factory and the eerie coolness of the foreign metal on the workers’ knees. Charged with symbolic meaning while referencing the estrangement of working-class women, the pavilion’s constituent parts come together in a web of associations, references, and stories.