Into My Lungs: Mapping the industrial scar

When we speak of a garment worker, what image flickers to mind? A young, slender woman poised at a sewing machine. She endures a ten to twelve-hour shift—or perhaps she is on the street, raising her voice for the wages she's owed. That is the portrait we all recognise, isn't it?

But that image is merely a fragment of the story. The reality is vaster, more intricate. The country's most powerful export engine, the garment industry, is built by a multitude of hands—most of which remain veiled and unheard.

These workers do not merely stitch shirts or finish seams. They command the loom and spin the yarn; they labor within the hum of textile mills, churning out the raw cotton that fuels the global fast-fashion machine. Their lives, and their illnesses, remain shrouded in shadows.

A recent exhibition in Dhaka challenged the world to confront this silence Titled Into My Lungs, the installation exhibition breathed life into Gulshan's Alliance Française de Dhaka from 23 January to 7 February.

With less scrutiny, owners face little pressure to improve conditions. Trade unions are non-existent, and child labour still persists. Many workers enter the mills as teenagers. Cotton dust begins to lodge in young lungs before adulthood.

The project was led by two artists from very different backgrounds. Jerusalem-born Ayman Alazraq and Stockholm-born Emanuel Svedin are joined by Dhaka-based producer and curator Fouzia Mahin Choudhury. Together, they have built one of the first research-based artistic works focused on Bangladesh's textile and spinning sector.

The gallery experience begins before the viewer has time to settle. Just inside the gate, an installation made of rope hangs to the left. Its shape looks like a single human lung. From it dangle clumps of light brown cotton. The somewhat unsettling visualisation represents lungs scarred by byssinosis, a chronic disease caused by long term exposure to cotton dust.

Inside the main space, the mood tightens once visitors push past a curtain into another installation. Symbolic workwear hangs against the wall. Long strands of yarn fall from above. The space feels enclosed — somewhat carceral.

The threads dip into pots of black ink below. The ink stains the yarn at different paces for different strands. It stands in for the workers' lungs that are slowly being affected by micro doses of yarn.

Inside the yarn enclosure, cotton rolls are placed in a neat line. They lie side by side, resembling deliberate evocation of bodies laid out after death. It is a reminder that lung disease in the mills is not an abstract risk, rather a lived reality, and for many, a fatal one.

Throughout the exhibition, cotton appears again in different forms. Cubes are stacked together, suggesting lungs full of cotton in an abstract way. Another artwork mixes cotton with brightly coloured fabric.

At the end of the exhibition space, a mat is spread on the floor. Here, visitors sit to watch the documentary film that anchors the project.

The film gives voice to spinning mill workers who rarely get to speak publicly. Many of the workers conceal their faces due to the fear of losing their job.

In the film, workers explain how byssinosis—a collection of respiratory symptoms elicited by exposure to raw, nonsynthetic textiles during their manufacturing process— develops after five to ten years of continuous exposure. 

Doctors and medical experts describe how working in such environments causes irreversible damage. Workers' lungs stiffen, breathing becomes a struggle, working lives shrink. Many workers are forced to retire early, and many of them die long before old age.

The film also exposes the structural gaps that allow this suffering to continue. Spinning mills often sit outside the compliance systems imposed by international brands on garment factories.

With less scrutiny, owners face little pressure to improve conditions. Trade unions are non-existent, and child labour still persists. Many workers enter the mills as teenagers. Cotton dust begins to lodge in young lungs before adulthood.

The documentary was first screened in Oslo in 2022. Its presence in Dhaka carries a different weight. Here, the distance between viewer and subject is not much, yet it somehow feels so as it confronts the audiences with an ignored reality.