Beneath the Surface: Labor and Consumerism

Building from Baloji’s photograph, recently acquired by The Block Museum of Art, this exhibition reminds us that beneath the surfaces of leisure, consumption, and profit lie histories of exploitation and environmental damage. Beneath the Surface brings together artworks and advertising from the Block Museum collection and the Herskovits Library of African Studies to make us think about how extractive industries rely on visual strategies to promote consumption, obscure labor, and elevate luxury. By presenting these works side by side, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how our own desires, shaped by photographs and advertisements, are linked to hidden processes of extraction, exploitation, and environmental harm. Beneath the Surface is presented in conversation with Teresa Montoya’s Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years after the Gold King Mine Spill, on view in the main gallery. Together, the projects underscore how the impacts of extraction link distant communities.