Chinese Business was the result of a residency by Yugoslav artist Mladen Stilinović at the 2009 IASPIS international program in Stockholm. The series comprises ten two-dimensional collages assembled on standard paper, incorporating three main elements: black-and-white photographic images of miners and steelworkers sourced from publications on Swedish industrial history, price tags from supermarket advertisements in Sweden, and strips of U.S. dollar bills seven millimeters wide. These components combine to compose collages continuing the artist’s exploration of the concept of labor and his critique of the capitalist production system, a theme central to his work since the 1970s.

The compositions in Chinese Business evoke the Dadaist artists of the historical avant-garde, whom Stilinović has acknowledged as a significant influence on several occasions. He shares an interest with them in the deconstructive power of the absurd, as well as the use of collage as a critical creative technique. Throughout his career, Stilinović has employed this ambivalent approach, which he has described as the “principle of order and disorder,” to address complex themes such as human suffering, power, and money.¹ The inclusion of dollar bills in Chinese Business can be interpreted as a Benjaminian critique of the commodification of art, a theme also appearing in Stilinović’s other works, such as PJEVAJ! (SING!) (1980), where the artist is shown with a bill glued to his forehead, questioning the autonomy of the artist. Chinese Business also suggests a parallel between capitalist modes of production and the practice of art itself.

The piece represents a natural evolution of Stilinović’s critical interest in history, structures of exploitation, and time, with his characteristic sense of humor and irony. In Chinese Business, the artist numbered his series so that the price tags with lower values corresponded to images with higher numbers. This contradictory numerical arrangement could be seen as an allusion to the reduced costs associated with outsourcing production and labor in a globalized production system: by the 2000s, the distinction between manufacturing countries and consuming countries had become a reality on a global scale. The images of industrial workers and miners, juxtaposed with price tags and dollar bills, highlight the precariousness of manual labor in factories, the setting where wage workers spend their time. The final image in the series – showing workers asleep and without any cut-up bills – might represent a state of extreme exhaustion, or, as other writers have suggested, a silent strike, symbolizing the devaluation of labor to the point of futility.² The snapshot is reminiscent of his iconic work Umjetnik radi (Artist at Work) (1978), in which Stilinović portrayed himself lying in bed in eight photographs. The introduction of sleep as a disruptive element in the productive sphere can be read as an act of rebellion against capitalist exploitation. In recent years, authors like Jonathan Crary have argued that sleep constitutes the only form of resistance against the 24/7 temporality of the current production system. In this sense, Stilinović’s image emerges as a precursor to many contemporary theories on the capitalization of life and subjectivity that have multiplied in recent decades.

1. Mladen Stilinović, “Living Means Never Having to Attend Court: In conversation with Branka Stipančić,” in Mladen Stilinović: Umetnik na delu / Artist at work 1973-1983, Ljubljana: Gallery ŠKUC, 2005. https:// mladenstilinovic.com/interviews/written-interviews/living-means/.

2. Jonatan H. Engqvist, “Just as Money is Paper, so a Gallery is a Room”, in Work, Work, Work: A Reader on Art and Labour, Stockholm: Konstnärsnämnden / IASPIS / Sternberg Press, 2012.

Clara Derrac