Employee of the Month
Complete with commemorative plaques and gold bling, Employee of the Month is a humorous yet thought-provoking send-up of the “Presidential Walk of Fame.” Greatly impressed by a Hilton Hotel’s “Wall of Fame” honoring employees, President Trump created a similar wall of portraits, and wrote many of the accompanying texts describing himself (twice) and his predecessors. This “Presidential Walk of Fame” was installed in late 2025 in the West Colonnade at the White House.
Over the course of my year as an artist-in-residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, I heard louder and louder echoes of the antiquated texts I read from the IMSS library in retrograde Trump administration statements on health and gender. I capture these echoes in pairings from historical texts in the IMSS collection with excerpts from current government documents. My primary texts are Dr. Charles Meigs’ 1845 English translation of Dr. Marc Colombat de l’Isère’s influential A Treatise on the Diseases and Special Hygiene of Females; and the corrected version of Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices, published by the Department of Health and Human Services on November 19, 2025. Both texts pathologize any deviation from rigidly-defined gender norms; insist on the inherent authority of the doctor over the patient; and question the veracity of patient testimony and lived experience. By placing contemporary texts alongside striking parallels written in the flowery prose of the past, I reveal both the historical roots and the absurdity of these notions.
My Employee of the Month is an avatar of MAGA womanhood, complete with the inflated Mar-a-Lago face of both numerous administration officials and blow-up sex dolls. Named the “Secretary of Truth,” she is an incarnation of the black-and-white portraits included in “Presidential Walk of Fame,” most (in)famously an image of an autopen representing President Biden. Through the mouthpiece of my Employee of the Month, I urge the viewer to consider womanhood, performative gender, and constructed personal appearance, particularly when they evoke paths to power for some, but calls for the denial of personal identity for others.