[dentifier] K2026-014

"For nearly six years I worked in an art gallery." Emile Rubino opens his text for his exhibition Baby, I'm Yours at rhizome_ in Kortrijk with this sentence. For this project, the gallery served both as his workplace and as the subject of a series of 'undercover photographs,' including the three works in the Kanal collection. In Pierrot, a reflective silver sphere diverts attention away from a cluttered table bearing everyday objects such as a glass and a rubber band.

In his work, Rubino balances an intimate first-person perspective with the idea that photography can extend beyond the individual eye of the viewer. He works according to strict conceptual and technical processes, yet avoids the conventions of specific photographic genres. Through his photography, he explores how art production, labour and value are interrelated within a capitalist context, his studio often serving as both workplace and subject.

In Baby, I'm Yours, he takes this a step further, using the gallery itself as a studio and creating a series of hidden photographs. In doing so, he blurs the boundary between artistic and ordinary labour, and his practice becomes a quiet form of resistance against the constraints of wage labour. His images show how everyday labour can acquire meaning, prompting reflection on care, maintenance and attention. Artistic work, he suggests, is never separate from labour, but rather both emerges from it and remains constrained by it.