Essays and artists' projects explore the ubiquity of cloth in everyday life and the effect of globalization on art and labor; with more than 100 color images. "The Object of Labor" explores the personal, political, social, and economic meaning of work in the context of art and textile production. The ubiquity of cloth in everyday life, the historically resonant relationship of textile and cloth to labor, and the tumultuous drive of globalization make the issues raised by this publication of special interest today. The seventeen essays cover topics ranging from art-making practices to labor history and the effects of globalization as seen through art and labor. The artists' projects - twelve striking and beautiful eight-page, full color spreads - conduct parallel investigations into art, cloth, and work. The contributors explore, from historical and personal perspectives, such subjects as the charged history of offshore garment workers; the different systems of production and consumption in factories, homes, studios, and exhibitions; the revelation of class, gender, and sexuality through cloth, costume, and textile images; textile production as commemorative acts in South Africa, the United States, and India; transnationalism, cultural hybridity, and race in the work of individual artists; lost histories of garment production and embroidery; the physical act of art-making as labor; and the value of handmade and "technologically improved" objects.

Introduction / Joan Livingstone and John Ploof -- Piecework : home, factory, studio, exhibit / Maureen P. Sherlock -- Labor, history, and sweatshops in the new global economy / Alan Howard -- That word which means smuggling across borders, incorporated : the multipled suit / J. Morgan Puett, Iain Kerr -- Work now / Karen Reimer -- Machine dreams / Helen Haejin Cho -- Can you see us now? = ?Ya nos pueden ver? / subRosa -- Lace curtains for Troy / Margo Mensing -- Damask / Anne Wilson -- Amazwi Abesifazane : voices of women / Carol Becker -- Amazwi Abesifazane : reclaiming the emotional and public self / Andries Botha -- Visible links / Lara Lepionka -- I mean this / Darrel Morris -- Stitching women's lives : Sujuni and Khatwa from Bihar, India / Viji Srinivasan ... [et al.] -- Inventory of labor / Barbara Layne, Sue Rowley -- Signifiers / Park Chambers -- Home work / Lou Cabeen -- What are you making? / Lisa Clark -- From Prototypes for new understanding / Brian Jungen -- Sew your own stump flag / Susie Brandt -- Torn and mended : textile actions at Ground Zero and beyond / Nancy Gildart -- Ada Lovelace and the loom of life / Sadie Plant -- Hands on spots / Lia Cook -- Biting and chewing in contemporary art / Alison Ferris -- From Soundsuits / Nick Cave -- Laboured cloth : translations of hybridity in contemporary art / Janis Jefferies -- Big boy, leisure lady, gay Victorians / Yinka Shonibare -- From Cities on the move / Kimsooja -- Material with a memory / Mary Jane Jacob -- An aesthetic of Blackness : strange and oppositional / Bell Hooks -- From Indigo blue / Ann Hamilton -- Deco-jamming is eco-glam! / Neil MacInnis in collaboration with Judith Leemann -- Hand labour and digital capitalism at the Chicago Board of Trade / Ingrid Bachmann -- Iron into lace / Merrill Mason -- Artist as insect / Kevin Murray.