If the law can be effortlessly bent with money and power—then we, as working class people, need to imagine new ways of subterfuge.
BLUE COLLAR CRIME presents 25 artists whose works exemplify working class solidarity by wielding humor, invention, pleasure, and irreverence in the face of instability. This exhibition is borne out of a recognition that white collar crime has produced an increasingly precarious world with which our only response can be blue collar crime. Corporate interests operate by a different set of rules, and profit at the expense of our collective well being. Private industry refuses to contribute their share of taxes while destroying the environment, stagnating wages, and monopolizing business.
BLUE COLLAR CRIME distinguishes itself from the existing connotations of blue-collar crime as less sophisticated or more violent than white collar crime. BLUE COLLAR CRIME learns its lessons as the bastard step-child of white collar crime; it is subversive, furtive, unpredictable, conspiratorial, and fugitive. It delights, confuses, and surprises. It is the absurd born from the absurd. Through the exhibition, we redefine BLUE COLLAR CRIME as a language of possibility from a place of uncertainty.
We reject money, power, control and cruelty as tenants of conservatism. Instead we harness humor, criticality, solidarity, vulnerability in the face of corruption and stand firm within the wealth of connection, acceptance, tolerance, imagination, and care.
