Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Mary Claire Page

Employee of the Month

A grim yet humourous look at what it means to be a model employee.

““Employee of the Month” combines elements of painting and sculpture to create a humorous yet insidious installation. Mary Page unpacks grievances with corporate greed and the expectations of the worker, while drawing inspiration from personal experience in retail and customer service. Caught in a moment between tasks, the main figure poses for a picture honouring their hard-earned achievement of employee of the month. They are joined by the desperate, distressed portraits of others like them. In a world where “grind culture” encourages people to abandon personal and emotional desires for a hard days' work while employers offer insufficient compensation for such, “Employee of the Month” seeks to start a conversation about why we’re willing to work ourselves to death? ”