Kasia Ozga uses textiles to evoke the human body as well as unseen labor in industrial and domestic contexts, highlighting interactions between value and waste, power and protest. Essential Workers is a 34 x 39 foot wide immersive surface sewn out of used blue-collar overalls, jackets, jumpsuits, and pants in response to temporary rules that affected how and when people worked as the COVID-19 pandemic got underway. Used utilitarian clothing intended to protect the body is literally unmade, carefully taken apart at the seam, and resewn to other garments. This produces a sea of workers' bodies that join together to flow off the edge of the picture plane. In a social and political context characterized by changing norms of employment (the rise of outsourcing, temping, and gig workers, the disappearance of long-term contracts and government sector jobs, etc...) and the specific realities of labor revealed by the pandemic, the art asks us to re-imagine the past, present, and future of work.