Sweætshops® (alternatively stylised as sweXtshops) is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and
multi-instrumentalist. The term sweætshops, a portmanteau of sweat-shops and sweet-shops, represents our contradictory participation as both the perpetrators and victims of the current global economic system. Under the guise of an impersonal corporate entity their practice creates absurdist occult allegories from the waste of consumerism and pop/internet culture to highlight social undercurrents we lack a terminology for and therefore struggle to address.
Blurring the distinctions between “high-brow” and “low-brow” culture, authenticity and artifice and truth and falsity using different configurations of live-art, sound, public disruption, film, AI and audience participation.
For Hidden Door’s 2025 Festival Sweætshops® presents IMPERSON, a provocative 15-track music-video installation.
Using the abstraction of the most impersonated person on the planet through the lens of the Egyptian Memphite afterlife system of iconisation to explore supernormal stimulus, the veneration of problematic men, cultural appropriation, imposter syndrome and primordial loneliness, baby.
Recorded over several years across multiple locations including the Memphis Necropolis, Porthcawl Elvis Festival, Glasgow Prestwick Airport, the British Museum and the Direct From Graceland Exhibition, using technology now prohibited for future use by the ELVIS Act.
Created by Sweætshops® (@swextshops), filmed by Oliver Benton, audio production by Edwin McLachlan. Supported by the Creative Scotland Open Fund.
For Hidden Door’s 2022 Festival at the Old Royal High School Sweætshops® presented witchtrialversion3.
Find out more at swextshops.io or instagram.com/swextshops
