A globetrotting travelling exhibition curated by anthropologist Ewa Klekot and Poznán ceramic artist Arkadiusz Szwed, Traces of Work focuses on making the invisible visible.

The artist and the curator had the workers at the porcelain factory in Ćmielów prepare the dinner service Die menschliche Spur (The Human Touch), a work that makes their artisanal skill and their extensive experiential knowledge in factory production visible through an unusual trick: during production, they wore gloves whose tips were dusted with cobalt salts. The dark blue fingerprints on the porcelain only emerged after firing. Portraits and quotations from the factory workers frame the embedded traces of their labour. This brings the “human factor” and its valuation in industrial production into sharper focus – an area that is also becoming increasingly significant for consumers.

A special exhibition presented by the Adam Mickiewicz Institut in cooperation with the Museum Europäischer Kulturen (MEK), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.