The life and death of a worker

Conversation between Didier Eribon and Ersan Mondtag

moderated by Çagla Ilk

German Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale

2nd September 2024 at 5pm

Ersan Mondtag and Didier Eribon have something in common: 

They both write about their family stories, more precisely about people who have worked all their lives and suffered undignified deaths. 

In his latest book The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, the internationally renowned writer Didier Eribon recounts the story of his mother: a woman who grew up in an orphanage, started working as a cleaning lady at the age of 14 and later worked in a glass factory until it was closed down.

Eribon describes the hard life and gruelling daily routine of a working-class woman who never received an education, toiled in factories for decades, was married to a man she never loved, took care of her children and kept the family together, organized herself into a union, was eventually sidelined and witnessed how the factories were closed - and how many have only been able to keep their heads above water with precarious jobs ever since.

Ersan Mondtag's work Monument to an Unknown Person is dedicated to his grandfather Hasan Aygün. Coming from a poor, rural region east of Ankara, Aygün moved to West Berlin in the mid-1960s and worked for over 30 years at Eternit, a company that manufactured building materials from asbestos. Setting off for a future in Berlin, 3,000 kilometers away, was his only chance to escape a life of bitter poverty and lack of prospects. But it also became a deadly trap for him. In 1993, asbestos processing was finally banned in Germany. Aygün died shortly after his early retirement from a serious lung disease that was undoubtedly caused by inhaling toxic fibers. 

In a talk moderated by curator Çagla Ilk, the two storytellers will talk about class and family.