Conversation with Sheila Pinkel at Nancy Buchanan's house, Los Angeles, 2002

Sheila Pinkel recounts her long-standing involvement with garment industry activism and the formation of the group Common Threads, composed of women artists and academics who collaborated on political posters to support garment worker unionization: “That was in the mid-1970s... at a time when the garment unions were trying to coalesce and form a new union called Unite.” In 1995, Common Threads received permission to install a series of storefront window exhibitions near Los Angeles' garment district. The installations depicted the 20th-century history of hidden labor in the garment industry, focusing on women’s contributions and struggles. The exhibit was presented in both English and Spanish to reach the largely Spanish-speaking local workforce. Pinkel elaborates on their inclusion of key events, such as the notorious El Monte sweatshop, where Thai workers were illegally detained and grossly exploited.

The conversation turns to the limited documentation of labor history in America: “It is a travesty in the sense of it's not being acknowledged or recorded… you discover that there is precious little about labor history that's been written… and we have to work very hard to preserve that history because it disappears.”

Pinkel shares her experiences documenting garment workers’ conditions in Bangkok: “The conditions for workers in Los Angeles and Bangkok were very similar... They are basically paid by the piece... and don't get paid if work isn’t 'good enough’.” In Bangkok, she collaborated with Thai activists supporting garment and home workers, culminating in a transnational exhibition with Thai and American artists at Silpakorn University. Pinkel addresses labor exploitation within global manufacturing, highlighting that brands like Nike, Reebok, and H&M profit by setting harsh production quotas for contractors, enabling exploitative practices while denying responsibility. She describes how low-cost demands lead to brutal conditions for workers in countries like Thailand, sometimes likened to modern-day concentration camps. Workers in Los Angeles also face exploitation, often earning far below a livable wage. "Downtown Los Angeles is filled with these anonymous high-rises that are wall-to-wall sewing machines with people working as hard as they can. And it’s invisible... an entire hidden world.”

Pinkel explains that she seeks to address social and economic justice through her work and connect viewers to ethical issues, aligning with feminist principles: “And I see feminism as a way of connecting art with life. To me, in an art practice, women weave those worlds together.”