a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work

Installation view, Edel Asanti Gallery, London, 2016

An iteration of The Return Project (ongoing since 2012), the artworks in a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work (2016) examine the extraction of surplus value and the erasure of labor in both the art market and capitalism. By subtly altering mass-produced commodities—replacing a cubic zirconia with a diamond, swapping a standard nail for 24K gold—and returning them unnoticed into circulation, the project exposes the contingency of value and the dependence of worth on systems of authentication rather than material transformation.

These interventions engage Marxist critiques of labor and exchange, revealing how value is assigned, withheld, or rendered invisible. By embedding artistic labor within consumer circulation, The Return Project questions: Who profits from surplus labor? How does the market obscure production? If value is constructed, what does that mean for the worker, the artist and the commodity itself?

Installation view - Diamond Ring with NO CASH VALUE. 2016

A $35 silver ring from The Hudson’s Bay Company is subtly transformed: its cubic zirconia is replaced with a $1,200 diamond, engraved “Original Artwork, B.G. 2016,” and returned for a full refund. The intervention vanishes into the commercial system, unnoticed.

This work exposes the arbitrariness of value, authorship, and exchange. A material upgrade should, in theory, elevate worth—yet without recognition, the ring remains indistinguishable from its original state. Value proves fluid, dictated less by material than by context.

A clay token stamped “NO CASH VALUE” remains—a residue of the transaction. Functioning as both proof and detritus, it underscores the paradox of worth: a worthless object made valuable through its association with art.

Diamond Ring with NO CASH VALUE

Diamond Ring (before)
Detail
2016
Inkjet on archival paper
4” x 4”

Photo of the purchased silver ring with cubic zirconia.

Diamond Ring (after)
Detail
2016
Inkjet on archival paper
4” x 4”

Photo of the returned silver ring with diamond and engraved authenticaton.

NO CASH VALUE
Detail
2016
2” diameter

Cubic zirconia pressed into clay leaving the artist’s finger print.

Shepherd and the Witch (with Primitive Accumulation)
2016

Shepherd and the Witch (2016) draws on the symbolic resonances of the shepherd’s crook and the broomstick to explore themes of labor, marginalization, and resilience within capitalist structures. Inspired by Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, the piece transforms a $5.99 broom into a hybrid object, merging the labor-associated broom with the shepherd’s crook—an emblem of pastoral care and resistance. The removed portion of the broom, carved into a functioning flute, evokes the relationship between art, craft, and survival under systems that commodify labor and suppress dissent. Returning the altered object to its retail origins underscores the broom’s historical roles as both a domestic tool and a symbol of rebellion.

Shepherd and the Witch (with Primitive Accumulation)

Primitive Accumulation