Maryam Jafri Global Slum


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Global Slum is the collective title for a series of photo/text works, all of which focus on the theme of role-play and economy. One section, the Schools/Hospitals/Prisons series for example, presents School, Hospital and Prison theme rooms for S/M role-play, whereas another section focuses on a prefabricated Software Office Film Set in India’s Ramoji Film City. The project continues Jafri’s longstanding interest in role-play as it intersects with the broader economic and social currents of our time and extends it, for the first time, 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. Short text panels written by Jafri accompany the photos and supply odd facts and surprising connections between the sites. The photos that comprise Global Slum are all sourced from diverse image banks - corporate, military, media, and personal – and evince a deadpan, vernacular touch. At first glance what seems to unite the sites is that they are all representations of something else – architectural simulacra – but in fact they are all sites for labor as much as desire, they are used as much as imaged, produced as much as imagined, with real effects economically, physically, psychologically. Ultimately, the project argues that what unites these locations is how they all exemplify the links between representation and production, materiality and immateriality in today’s world.
Global Slum (2012), 9 Grids (each grid has 8 photographs + 1 text), Size of individual grids vary but each one is around 110 x 80 cm / 43 x 31.5 inches back to works

Global Slum is the collective title for a series of photo/text works, all of which focus on the theme of role-play and economy. One section, the Schools/Hospitals/Prisons series for example, presents School, Hospital and Prison theme rooms for S/M role-play, whereas another section focuses on a prefabricated Software Office Film Set in India’s Ramoji Film City. The project continues Jafri’s longstanding interest in role-play as it intersects with the broader economic and social currents of our time and extends it, for the first time, 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. Short text panels written by Jafri accompany the photos and supply odd facts and surprising connections between the sites. The photos that comprise Global Slum are all sourced from diverse image banks - corporate, military, media, and personal – and evince a deadpan, vernacular touch. At first glance what seems to unite the sites is that they are all representations of something else – architectural simulacra – but in fact they are all sites for labor as much as desire, they are used as much as imaged, produced as much as imagined, with real effects economically, physically, psychologically. Ultimately, the project argues that what unites these locations is how they all exemplify the links between representation and production, materiality and immateriality in today’s world.