What happens to work culture and workers’ lives when viewed through the lens of art, subject to the artist’s interpretation, as in Birender Yadav’s? The uniqueness of Birender Yadav’s artwork ‘Only the Earth Knows the Labour’ (2025), exhibited at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, lies in the fact that it renders visible the politics and aesthetics of transforming this into an installation.
Birender Yadav’s ‘Only the Earth Knows the Labour‘ (2025) deserves special attention in the context of the ideas it puts forward. The marginalisation of migrant workers is a significant subject in Yadav’s 2025 work. Yadav focuses on the “facelessness” of those who construct our contemporary infrastructure within the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which frequently examines topics of migration and trade. Birender Yadav’s theme, which explores the lives and toils of labourers who work hard, even in the hardest seasons, also raises questions about the workplace and its representations. Yadav, whose practice is deeply rooted in his upbringing as the son of a blacksmith in an iron mine, uses this installation to bridge the gap between industrial raw materials and the human bodies that extract them.
The artist is speaking in the context of the installation on display at the Biennale.
1) What inspired you to create Only the Earth Knows Their Labour, and how did the idea first take shape?
The idea for Only the Earth Knows Their Labour developed slowly through years of engagement with brick kiln sites in Mirzapur. When I first began visiting the kilns, I did not go with the intention of making a specific artwork. I spent time observing the workers, their repetitive gestures—hands pressing wet clay into moulds, bodies bending to lift bricks, and the long lines of stacked clay slowly transforming into architecture. What stayed with me most were the palm impressions on the bricks. Every brick carries the mark of a worker’s hand, but once that brick becomes part of a wall, that trace disappears. That realisation gradually led me to think about how labour becomes invisible once its product enters the built environment. The idea of the work emerged from that tension—between the permanence of the brick and the disappearance of the worker.
2) Your work draws from the lives of migrant workers in brick kilns. How did your field experiences in Mirzapur influence the installation?
The kiln is not just a workplace; it is also a temporary settlement where entire families live for months during the production cycle. By returning to the same kilns over many years, I began to understand the seasonal rhythm of their lives. Workers arrive from different regions, live around the kiln while production continues, and then return home, only to come back again the next year. Over time, my role changed. At first, I was an outsider with a sketchbook and camera, and there was suspicion because workers often assume outsiders might be government officials or activists. But gradually I began spending longer periods there, sometimes staying with them and even working alongside them. I started learning their techniques and incorporating their physical processes into my sculptures. This shifted the dynamic from simply documenting their lives to engaging with them through shared material practices.
3) How has your personal background—growing up in a family connected to mining—shaped your artistic engagement with labour and material?
I grew up in Dhanbad, where my father worked as a blacksmith for Tata Steel Coal Limited. The environment of coal dust, iron tools, and heavy manual labour was simply part of everyday life for me. At that time, I did not see it as something artistic—it was just reality. Later, during my studies at Banaras Hindu University, I began to notice a disconnect between the aesthetic traditions being taught and the labour-filled environments I had grown up around. I realised that the tools and materials of labour—the iron, the soot, the calloused hands—already carried a powerful sculptural language. That realisation shaped my practice. Instead of treating labour as a subject to depict, I began working directly with the materials and processes connected to it.
4) Why did you choose migrant workers, particularly those in brick kilns, as the focus of this work?
I first encountered brick kiln workers during my time at Banaras Hindu University. Many of them had migrated from regions of Jharkhand, including Dhanbad, Ranchi, Lohardaga, and Dumka. Because I had grown up in Dhanbad, where my father worked in the coal mining industry, I felt an immediate connection with them. I was also able to communicate with some of the workers through Khortha, a local language spoken in parts of Jharkhand, which helped build trust and conversations over time. My own family originally comes from Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and migrated to Dhanbad for mining work. Labour migration is, therefore, something I have seen firsthand within my own family and community. Many people from my district moved to Jharkhand for work in the mines, while in northern India, a large number of brick kiln workers come from Jharkhand. Seeing these overlapping patterns of migration made me more attentive to the lives of kiln workers. Brick kilns represent a complex intersection of labour, migration, and social hierarchy. Many of the workers I encountered belong to marginalised communities.
5) The installation highlights the “facelessness” of workers. How did you translate this idea visually and spatially in the work?
Instead of representing the workers directly, I focused on the traces they leave behind—palm impressions, tools, and everyday objects connected to their lives. By presenting these elements without the human figure, the installation evokes their presence while also emphasising their absence. This approach reflects a larger reality: the labour of these workers exists everywhere in our built environment, but the workers themselves remain unseen.
6) Your installation suggests that absence itself can represent presence. How did you conceptualise the absence of workers within the space?
The absence of the workers in the installation was intentional. I wanted viewers to encounter the marks and objects of labour without immediately seeing the person who produced them.This absence encourages viewers to imagine the lives behind these traces. In doing so, it mirrors how labour operates in society—the product remains visible, while the worker disappears.
7) The title suggests that the earth “remembers” labour. What does this metaphor mean in the context of exploitation and memory?
The title reflects the idea that the earth itself carries the memory of labour. Clay absorbs the pressure of hands, the weight of repeated gestures, and the physical force of work.Even when society forgets the worker, those traces remain embedded in the material. In that sense, the earth becomes a silent witness to labour and exploitation.
8) How do you see this work contributing to broader conversations about migration, labour, and invisibility in contemporary society?
Migration is often described as movement from one place to another, but in the kiln context, it is more cyclical. Workers move seasonally between their villages and the kiln sites, often returning year after year because they have very limited alternatives. By focusing on this cycle, the work invites viewers to reconsider migration not simply as mobility, but as a condition shaped by economic dependency and structural inequality.
9) Your installation uses materials such as iron, coal, and clay. What symbolic role do these materials play in your narrative?
These materials are deeply connected to the labour environments that shaped my life and my research. Clay is the central material of the kiln—it is what workers handle every day. Coal connects to the firing of bricks and also to my childhood memories of mining environments. Iron refers to the tools and industrial structures that surround these labour systems. Together these materials form a physical link between different sites of labour.
10) Why was terracotta an important medium for recreating everyday objects left behind by workers?
Terracotta allowed me to remain materially connected to the same earth that workers handle daily. By recreating objects such as trunks or tools in terracotta, these items become part of the same cycle of clay, drying, and firing as bricks. This transformation also suggests that the worker, the tool, and the product are inseparable.
11) The installation blurs the boundary between the worker’s body and tools. How did you approach this idea during the making process?
My father often says that when a worker spends years working with the same tools, the tools slowly change shape through constant use, but the worker’s body also begins to change along with them. Over many years, observing brick kiln workers, I became increasingly aware of how repetitive physical work gradually reshapes the body. The body slowly begins to mirror the tools and gestures of the work itself, until the distinction between the worker’s body and the tool almost disappears. In many ways, the body and the tools become inseparable.
12) Could you describe how collecting soil and dust from kiln sites informed the drawings that accompany the installation?
Collecting soil and dust from the kiln sites kept the drawings physically connected to the places they reference. Instead of using conventional pigments, I used materials gathered from the sites themselves, so the landscape of labour becomes part of the image—almost like a material memory of that place.
13) The installation is described as resembling an excavation site. How important was spatial immersion in shaping the viewer’s experience?
Spatial immersion was crucial to the installation. I wanted the space to feel almost like an archaeological site, where viewers encounter fragments, traces, and objects that hint at lives and labour that once occupied it.
As visitors move through the installation, they come across terracotta casts of everyday belongings—objects similar to those found in the temporary dwellings of kiln workers. Displayed within the space, these forms appear like scattered biographical fragments, almost like archaeological remains. Through this arrangement, the installation attempts to evoke what I think of as embodied histories, where materials, objects, and traces carry the memory of labour and lived experience. In this way, the clay within the installation becomes a medium of remembrance, connecting the viewer to the lives, knowledge, and labour practices that remain embedded in the land.
14) The environment of the installation feels ritualistic and contemplative. Was this atmosphere intentional?
Yes, it was intentional, but it came very naturally from the subject itself. In the brick kilns, I often saw workers taking small pauses—before lifting, before the next load, or after finishing a stack. These pauses had a quiet ritual in them, even if the workers never called it that. When I arranged the forms in the installation, I wanted to bring the same feeling of a held breath. The light, the spacing, the hanging or stacking—all of this creates a mood where the body remembers the rhythm of work and rest. So the atmosphere is not something I imposed; it comes from the lived environment of labour.
15) How do you want viewers to physically and emotionally engage with the space as they move through it?
I want viewers to move slowly and with attention. The installation is not loud; it asks you to look closely at small details—marks, cracks, textures, the way things are placed. Physically, the space guides you between the works, as if you were walking through a construction site after everyone has left. Emotionally, I hope viewers sense the absence of the workers. That absence is the main presence. You imagine the bodies that carried the weight, the hands that shaped the soil, the breath that moved with the heat. The space should make you feel the labour without showing it directly.
16) Your work addresses bonded labour and generational exploitation. What responsibilities do you think artists have in representing such realities?
The first responsibility is not to romanticise or exaggerate. These lives are already hard; they don’t need artistic decoration. My second responsibility is to maintain trust with the people whose world I am entering. When I document or draw, I am careful not to take their stories out of context. I try to preserve their dignity. They are not subjects for me—they are collaborators, teachers, sometimes even friends. I feel responsible to be honest, to show the complexity: struggle, skill, humour, and resilience, not only suffering.
17) Do you see your work as a form of socio-political realism within contemporary Indian art? Why or why not?
I don’t think in those terms while working. My approach is not to illustrate any social issue. I respond to what I encounter—migrant workers, movement, heat, soil, exhaustion, skill. If that becomes political, it is because the life of a labourer in India is always political. It is connected to class, caste, migration, and land. But I don’t create work to fit that label. I create from experience, from seeing things closely. The realism comes from the ground, not from any artistic agenda.
18) How does your installation challenge the way modern economies celebrate infrastructure while ignoring the labour behind it?
Cities celebrate buildings, roads, and infrastructure as symbols of progress. But the labour that produces the materials for those structures is rarely acknowledged. By focusing on bricks—the most basic unit of construction—the installation reminds viewers that every structure is built upon the physical labour of people whose names and stories remain largely invisible.
19) What kind of dialogue or reflection do you hope visitors will carry with them after experiencing this installation?
I hope they think about the labour that goes into the materials that build our world. A brick is never just a brick; it comes from someone’s body, someone’s time. If visitors carry a sense of respect for those unseen workers. Maybe viewers will notice the weight, the repetition, the human effort involved in the simplest things around them. If even one person walks away thinking differently about labour and the people who perform it, the installation has done its work.
20) As the Kochi-Muziris Biennale often addresses themes of migration and trade, how do you think your work interacts with the broader curatorial vision of the exhibition?
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale often brings together histories of trade, migration, and labour. My work engages with these themes by focusing on the seasonal migration of kiln workers and the materials they transform. By bringing the traces of their labour into the exhibition space, the installation attempts to connect global conversations about movement and economy with the everyday realities of workers who remain largely unseen.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
