What do you get when an artist, a world-renowned museum, and a delivery worker walk into a gallery? Apparently, paid time off. Because apparently that's where we are now: it takes a full-blown art installation to secure a basic labor right in the gig economy.
Artist Fields Harrington was biking through Brooklyn when he witnessed a delivery worker get T-boned by a car, groceries scattering like confetti. He quickly realized there was no HR department to call, no manager to report to. Just an algorithm, a busted bike, and a very bad day. This, Harrington observed, made the bike lane a precarious office for countless workers.
Since 2024, Harrington has been photographing the highly customized e-bikes of New York City delivery workers. These aren't just vehicles; they're canvases of identity, plastered with reflective tape, flags, and stickers that hint at community and origin. His photos are a modern take on Realist worker portraits, focusing on the bikes to avoid objectifying the humans who ride them.
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As Harrington prepped his series for MoMA PS1's "Greater New York" exhibition, he wanted to do more than just hang pictures. He wanted art to offer something tangible: rest. He'd previously explored themes of extraction and exhaustion, linking the materials of e-bike batteries to the lives of the workers who depend on them.
His solution was simple, yet radical: he asked MoMA PS1 to "rent" a delivery worker's bike. For every hour the museum is open, the bike's owner receives their standard $21.44 hourly wage. For one week each month, a bike is conspicuously absent from the gallery, meaning its owner, Gustavo Ajche, is getting paid to not work.
Ajche, a co-founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos, is a leading advocate for delivery worker rights. He knows firsthand the fight for basic amenities — things like bathrooms, rest stops, and a place to recharge both phones and batteries — which, for gig workers, often fall to the city to provide, not their "employers."
Every 21 minutes and 44 seconds, a notification ding echoes through the gallery, a subtle nod to the hourly wage Ajche and his colleagues fought so hard to win. It's a constant reminder that while the gig economy offers convenience, it rarely offers the fundamental human need for rest or a safety net. Harrington's project provides a small, but significant, space for that need, allowing Ajche to use his paid time off as he sees fit – perhaps to save for an emergency, or simply to take a breath. And if that's not a powerful use of institutional space, what is?
