They Would Return Exhausted from a Twelve-Hour Shift and End up in a Tree

• acrylic ink from an airbrush on canvas, 2023

The title of the painting is a quote from Katarzyna Duda’s book “Korpo“ (published in 2022), which describes the exploitation o people working in multinational Corporation operating in Poland. Thousands of employees, including those working in distribution warehouses as couriers or messengers, function in a system of dependency between the corporate command centre and its (semi-)periphery, understood both figuratively and in a literal, locational sense. The exploited working people are ersatz – substitutes who help business giants reduce their costs, often at the expense of their own health or lives. Corporations have cleverly managed to eliminate the figure of the salaried employee and the labour rights associated with it.