Vaughnda Johnson:There’s No “I” in Team
March 2004
For millions the corporate office environment is the new source of the “quiet desperation” Thoreau was pondering over 100 years ago. Desperation making a huge success of the cartoon Dilbert and the cult movie Office Space. Many a cubicle across America has a trinket or a cartoon clipping expressing underlying anger at mismanagement and layoff fears, not to mention paper jams and computer meltdowns.
This project is part of a repeating theme in my work exploring the repressive institutional aspects of the office environment. The language and equipment depicted inside the coffee cups create a landscape of office life that is simultaneously mundane and absurd. The coffee cups paired against the drawings broach questions that I ask myself while I work in my own office job: Why is office daily life approached as seriously as it is? How does an individual cope within the corporate environment and maintain their humanity and sense of importance?
Vaughnda Johnson