“TOIL GLAMOUR” V

Exhibiting at AAF Hong Kong, with the gallery Artaflo.

Part of a series. See here.

Erin Griffith, a New York Times journalist, wrote an article in 2019 called “Why are young people pretending to love work?”

In it, she writes: "In the new work culture, enduring or even merely liking one’s job is not enough. Workers should love what they do, and then promote that love on social media, thus fusing their identities to that of their employers...this is toil glamour." While the article pre-dates the pandemic, has anything really changed despite the obvious shifts to how some of us work?

I have spent more than a decade of my life with my finger on the pulse of work culture issues, and this is a topic of particular interest to me. I see paeans to employers on social media platforms and in real-life social settings, gushingly optimistic posts and painfully exuberant encomiums talking up how enthralling and fulfilling (insert name of job) is or has been. Of course, some people love parts of their jobs, but these over-the-top declarations of love are emblematic of what Griffith has written, and prop up bad culture.

As an obvious consequence, the folks who don't want to extol the (imaginary or otherwise) virtues of their jobs or “fuse their identities” like the article says, are invisible publicly.

It’s easy to see that this is a toxic issue that occurs because of the structures we live and work in, and thus is a bit of a game one has to play to “win,” but we have got to tackle it. It renders words meaningless, pushes one-sided narratives of success, bolsters many bad employers, and fills conversation spaces that should critically observe work, careers, and workplaces, with fluff. It also cements a nasty social agreement - let's be frank - to simply lie and perform.

I feel a beautiful, urgent, and rebellious energy in this piece, but also find visual peace in the silky texture. The retro-futurist steampunk symbols felt appropriate to add to the canvas, given the topic I had in mind.

24h x 30w x 0.75d (inches); silk, cotton yarn, jute, metal on wood-backed canvas