The Reality Behind a Flight Attendant’s Smile
On my second visit to *Hello Goodbye* at Dimin, ceramicist Michelle Im’s first solo exhibition in New York, her terracotta flight attendants were much smaller than I remembered. Perhaps it was the press release’s reference to the Xi’an terracotta soldiers that made me think they were larger, or the combined presence of their multiplicity. Im’s attendants, coming in at around just under four feet (~1.2 m) and clad in what appear to be Korean Air uniforms, are resolutely hand-built and flatly painted, in a style that is more graphic than lifelike. There are nine figures in total (all works 2025), each bearing their own first name and a unique pose, smiling and ready to serve. Geum-Bi carries a teapot, Chae-Ri a bottle of expensive French wine; Young-Eun demonstrates a safety belt, while identical twins Ju-Bi and Eun-Bi hold their hands together to form a heart shape in a gesture of welcome. There is something wondrous about her renderings of real-life details in clay, and the discovery of each shirt button, patch pocket, and folded lapel is a delight.
Im first began working with flight attendants and related imagery some years ago, inspired by travels between her two homelands of the United States, where she was born and now resides, and South Korea, where she spent much of her childhood and adolescence. Initially painted on ceramic vessels, elements such as neck scarves and faces became discrete sculptural elements over the years, before becoming integrated into full-length figures similar to those in the exhibition, but on a much smaller scale. And scale here is important, particularly when representing a subject that has been as thoroughly objectified as the Asian woman. It is difficult to imagine these figures, with their disconcerting blank gazes and slightly inhuman proportions, providing an easy complement to a collection of ornamentalized representations of East Asian femininity — the painted beauty of a geisha, the porcelain figures of 18th- and 19th-century chinoiserie. Although they may lack the gravitas of life-size figures, their presence is nevertheless substantial enough to evoke the uncanny, and their placement on plinths brings them eye-level with the viewer.
Flight attendants, as service workers, are prime examples of those who engage in affective, rather than productive labor. Such workers not only have to carry out their core duties, but also enjoy doing so (or at least appear to). Which is to say, appearing to enjoy their core duties is in fact one of their core duties. In *The Managed Heart* (1979), her groundbreaking study of workers and emotional labor, Arlie Russell Hochschild outlines how important a flight attendant’s smile is to an airline’s core business and how its many valences have been exhaustively picked apart by company strategists. It must convey, she writes, that the attendant is “friendly, helpful and open to requests” while also appearing sincere, demanding a particular kind of “deep acting.” Through this lens, the smiles of Im’s figures, which are literally painted on, lead one to wonder what fatigues or resentments they might be concealing.
Alongside the physical and emotional exhaustion of such service work, however, is the opportunity for enforcement and control. As airline passengers strapped into our designated spaces, we are, in many ways, rendered helpless. Our movement is severely restricted, and the little choice we have over what we eat and watch, or even when we relieve ourselves, is largely illusory. While flight attendants might ostensibly be there for our comfort, they provide it strictly on their terms, or at least, those of the company they represent. Put a foot wrong, and Young-Eun, with the safety belt, might just choke you with it.
Michelle Im: *Hello, Goodbye* continues at Dimin (406 Broadway Floor 2, Tribeca, Manhattan) through July 11.