in 2011.) Bleuze-Carolan is trying to negotiate with Superchief for some kind of compensation and has not yet filed a lawsuit against the gallery though he won’t rule out the possibility of eventually suing to recover lost wages. The business, he said, is frequently on the brink of financial collapse, and “On paper [Zipco] has nothing.”
She was able to get the post taken down and Hurd eventually sent an email threatening to sue Superchief for chronic underpayment and the use of her unclothed image. She never got a response, she said, and she didn’t pursue it further because, “at that point, I was completely broke.
During a particularly difficult project for Scope Art Fair’s New York edition in 2019, building and repairing modular walls,,” by taking on the job, “That we were going to go bankrupt without it.” Short on cash and focused on Miami, Superchief temporarily took the New York gallery off party duty, shutting its doors for weeks to complete the gig, which allegedly made them more than $20,000. It quickly became apparent to workers that Superchief management had underestimated the size of the task.
From the beginning, both projects were chaotic. Pizzaro said that art had been damaged in transit and, lacking a clear plan, everything was behind schedule. Workers were forced to labor at long shifts, up to 20 hours at a time, only stopping to sleep a few hours on the warehouse floor. Pizarro and Temmeli told the Miami story as an example of how drugs were used to break down their personal boundaries and adulterate even the hardest, longest slogs with the trappings of Zipco’s never-ending party, a kind of fun that was no fun at all, and part of a frustrating sleight-of-hand, in which the gallery’s labor needs were somehow met without the presence of any “real” workers worth paying a living wage.
On Facebook, said Pizarro, “he reposted this Alexandria Ocasio Cortez post about housing. And someone commented ‘Dude, I think you should remain silent until you talk about why you’re exploiting your Black employees.’ And I commented ‘Thanks for your support’ and he blocked both of us.