In honor of Equal Pay Day 2018, Gallery Wendi Norris has partnered with Hired, a job marketplace that matches tech talent with the world’s most innovative companies, to present a curated project that will foster creative problem solving and dialogue around wage inequality.

The Shape of Change presents a commissioned body of work by artist Val Britton, curated in direct response to Hired’s 2018 Women, Work, and the State of Wage Inequality Report, which calculates current trends in tech salaries, particularly highlighting the wage gap between men and women in the field, as well as gaps across race, sexuality and age.

The installation will transform the atrium with two mixed media paintings on paper and a sculptural installation made up of cut paper and string. The work stems from Britton’s interpretation of the statistical analyses which become transmuted into visual elements, i.e. shapes, forms, and colors. She extracts ratios and statistics from the report to be converted into concrete masses. These abstract, geometric visual elements are imbued with Hired’s report data, yet remain open for audiences to explore a multitude of potential meanings.

Britton creates a material representation of the state of wage inequality to be corporeally understood and acknowledged. Her work allows the data to take shape and occupy space, engaging the viewer’s visceral response in hopes of changing the way we move through our current socio-economic environment.

Val Britton is a charter resident of the Artist Studio Program at Minnesota Street Project.