Tianjing Zhao

Working Cult

The excessive promotion of anxiety in some today’s workplace or on social media is brainwashing some people. Employers are constantly glamorizing working in order to make people more engaged at work. The social media has amplified the pressure to craft an image of success—for oneself, for one’s friends and colleagues, and even for one’s parents. Under pressure from all sides, working hard seems to be the best option for everyone. More and more people find their sense of existence in their work and work non-stop in pursuit of so-called success. Work is becoming a modern belief or modern cult. This project is based on common words which are said from employers to employees in the work place. Through illustrations to irony some bad situations in workplace and question that is it really right to place such a high value on hard work and the deification of work today. Employers are always trying to get employees to be more motivated for a variety of reasons. Of course, in order to pay lower wages, they tend not to mention money, but to persuade people in other, more abstract ways. I tried to visualize what employers often say employees can achieve if they work hard. Besides that, Employers today are always expecting employees to be multi-skilled while offering salaries that don’t increase. In a work cult, the abilities and potential of employees are infinitely emphasized and encouraged. In the illustration I use multiple hands and various symbols to represent the problem people need to solve during work. By comparing the small person in the small square with the main visual object above, the big and the small indicates the strong potential but also the big stress of each employee.

“The balance between work and various aspects that can be obtained through work is set by ourselves, not because of the input of other people’s values.”