School/Hospitals/Prisons is focuses on theme rooms for S/M role-play. The project underlines Jafri’s interest in labor, extending it to questions of architecture and site. In some of the images the human figure is noticeably absent whereas others actively feature the human figure or its stand-in – mannequins, costumes, props. At first glance the images appear to be merely a simulacrum, fictive replicas of institutional settings, but Jafri´s interest lies in their status as sites where a specific kind of gendered labor is performed: role-playing scenarios enacted by female gig-workers for a primarily male clientele.
Special note: School/Hospitals/Prisons is a subset of a broader photo/text work called Global Slum, with nine grids in total. School/Hospitals/Prisons comprises the first three grids.
School/Hospitals/Prisons (2012), 3 Grids (each grid has 8 photographs + 1 text),
Each grid approximately 110 x 80 cm / 43 x 31.5 inches