About the work

The new boots gleam under the indifferent light, a sharp, unyielding contrast to the soft, worn denim. They are an ambition, a promise of something not yet arrived, something to be built or earned or endured. But the bills emerging from the machine are already familiar, already destined for the same cycle of need and repayment. It makes one consider how often the tools of our ascent are also the chains of our continuing, how the very things meant to lift us out of a condition can become the instruments of its persistence. This is the curious burden of the practical object: it never quite escapes its own utility. It just keeps working, even when the wearer is tired.