Emotional Labor and Interpersonal Connection in the Creation of Contemporary Relational Art

Abstract

This article looks closely at the emotional labor artists put into contemporary relational art. Since relational aesthetics emerged, art has stopped being just something people view — it’s become a space for people to meet and connect. Yet few discussions address the emotional toll artists take on to make this happen. This article uses the concept of emotional labor proposed by Hochschild to analyze four representative practices: Rirkrit Tiravanija's gallery cooking project, Hu Yinping's town weaving collaboration with local women, Koki Tanaka's stranger collaboration experiments, and Song Dong's family memory presentations. Drawing on Olive Network's research on social practice artists and close readings of individual works, we map what emotional labor does in relational art. Emotional labor is both the backbone of relational art and a heavy, often unsustainable practical burden for creators. Artists are no longer just producing objects, but also investing a lot of energy to maintain connections between people. This creative approach breaks the boundary between art and life, and provides an aesthetic answer to how to rebuild trust between people in today's society.