Work Ethics

An exhibit by Kasia Ozga

Exhibition Open: April 6 - June 27, 2026
Gallery Reception: April 9, 6-8 pm

Where does work begin? With business owners who pay laborers to build and man factories? With workers who exchange bodily and mental wear and tear for wages? With mothers who labor to give birth to both? My art uses workwear to explore who works, why, and under what conditions. I transform what we discard to highlight buried perspectives and bring attention to how power manifests in relation to waste, modelling connections between material and social change.

Anchored in familiar, accessible, objects, my pieces subvert expectations about quality and value. I began making sculptures with garments after a 2020 temporary public artwork commission for a former Steelworks in France. A soft sculpture made with 300 articles of used workwear was subsequently repurposed into various wall-hanging and 3d surfaces. Now, I am introducing flexible fiberglass armatures into some of these textiles for the first time. These works imagine clothing as a temporary architectural structure that protects the body, which is and remains a site of production.

These works evoke presence and pride in collective labor, alongside loss on an individual and communal scale, from absent labor laws, the effects of globalization and offshoring, and the digitization of manual processes. Ultimately, I question which bodies are missing in political and cultural discourses, asking viewers whether our currentsituation is fixed or not and how change can emerge.

Artist Bio

Kasia Ozga is a Polish French American sculptor and installation artist based in Greensboro, NC. Ozga is a former Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship recipient,Harriet Hale Woolley grantee from the Fondationdes Etats-Unis, Jerome Fellowship recipient at Franconia Sculpture Park, and Paul-Louis Weiller award recipient from the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. Her work has been exhibited in over 15 different countries and she has participated widely in residencies in Europeand North America (Shakers, Nekatoenea, Pépinières Européennes de Création, ACRE, KHN). Currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at UNCG, Ozga holds a Ph.D. from the University of Paris 8, an M.F.A. from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, and a B.F.A. from the SMFA at Tufts University, Boston.