Untitled (Drawings from the Factory)

I usually make sketches for future paintings, but this one was different: a sketch without a reason, made in 2012, two years after I arrived in the UK and struggled to find engineering work because of my limited English. At the time, I was working in a plastic thermoforming factory in East Didsbury, where I drew and studied English beside huge, noisy machines during a difficult period marked by hierarchy, humiliation, and mockery. This pen drawing, made on the back of a cereal box with the same pen I used for factory labels, survived along with a few others on cardboard and plastic.