gajes del oficio | Carmen Argote

Nichols and Lenzner Galleries

September 13 - December 6, 2025

Carmen Argote’s practice examines the impacts of industrialization, colonization, labor, consumption, and desire within her immediate environment. Through site-specific sculptures, installations, and performances that utilize culturally and environmentally significant materials—such as citrus fruit, foraged clay, coffee, and cochineal—Argote converses with layered histories of labor, violence, and oppression as embodied experiences. 

Her installation at Pitzer College Art Galleries, entitled gajes del oficio, which translates roughly as “occupational hazards” or “snags of the trade,” highlights the inevitable human challenges within manual trade. In a labor market that demands machine-like levels of production, Argote redirects attention to the lived realities of labor, emphasizing tensions between expectations of perfection in industrialized contexts and the inherent imperfections of handmade work. This installation further explores themes of migration and cultural memory preserved across generations within two historically gendered labor forces—sewing and citrus farming—that have significantly shaped immigrant experiences in Southern California. 

At the heart of gajes del oficio is Argote’s collaboration with her mother, Carmen Vargas, whose migration from Mexico to Los Angeles led her to sewing—a skill learned from Argote’s grandmother. For Argote, learning this familial trade operates within an economy of care, where the acts of creation are inseparable from acts of love, protection, comfort, and intergenerational connection. This inheritance encompasses not only technical skills, but also survival mindsets, the quiet pride of continuing a trade, and the trust in one’s ability to adapt to constantly changing conditions. Sewing provided financial independence and creative empowerment for both her mother and grandmother, which was particularly meaningful in navigating male-dominated spaces. The handmade large-scale scrolls and jumpsuits central to this project symbolize both the burdens often placed on immigrant women and the resilience and agency reclaimed through craftsmanship.

Yet Argote’s work also critically acknowledges the exploitative dimensions of these labor histories reflected in the repetition of forms in the exhibition. Both citrus farming and garment manufacturing placed immigrant workers within relentless cycles of undervalued labor, grueling conditions, and low wages—cycles perpetuated by consumer demand for cheap goods and willful disconnection from the realities of production. Sewing, while offering autonomy and financial independence, simultaneously subjected immigrant women to exploitative factory labor conditions where bodies are neglected to produce garments for distant consumers. This duality underscores how historically gendered labor has been both empowering and oppressive, reflecting broader patriarchal and capitalist systems built on consumer complicity and a worker’s bodily sacrifice. 

By weaving together personal and historical narratives, Argote invites viewers to reconsider our relationships with consumption, desire, and sustainability. Exploring how we dress, interact with material goods, and utilize natural resources, Argote examines cycles of consumption and nourishment, revealing the hidden labor embedded in everyday materials. Her garments and sculptures—designed to carry heavy weights or organic materials such as locally-sourced citrus fruit that gradually decay over time—serve as metaphors for the waste inherent in overproduction and consumption. These works simultaneously evoke life’s impermanence, the passage of time, and the interconnectedness of human bodies, natural cycles, and material culture.

Through this layered investigation, Argote challenges viewers to recognize the invisible infrastructures sustaining our economies, prompting critical reflection on familial and cultural memories embedded in textiles, handmade traditions, and the act of creation itself. Ultimately, this project highlights the resilience and agency shaped by migration, intergenerational care, and sustainable practices, urging a reconsideration of how we approach living creatively, responsibly, and compassionately within broader ecological and social frameworks.

About the artist

Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara; lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA and BFA from University of California, Los Angeles (2007, 2004). Selected solo exhibitions have been held at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2022); Primary, Nottingham (2021); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2020); New Museum, New York (2019); PAOS, Guadalajara (2019); MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2015); and Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2013). Argote is a recipient of Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2019), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2019), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2013).

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