Artist Qiana Mestrich utilises vintage interoffice envelopes, the three new mixed-media collages were specifically created for the this exhibition. Hand-delivered by couriers, these yellow envelopes were (and are still) commonly used to traffic important memos, letters and other communications within municipal government agencies and private companies that have multiple offices and business locations. Interoffice envelopes feature a unique design with red string-and-button closure, including columns and rows on the outside where the recipient and sender can be listed. A precursor to email and one of the few office supplies that could be recycled and reused by marking out the previous recipient, these envelopes are a kind of palimpsest that contain historical information about an organization's staff and its operations

Working primarily within (auto)biography, the artist’s practice incorporates collage, photography, writing, installation, search algorithms and the family album. To support herself and her children, she has simultaneously held multiple, full-time jobs within corporate America while also pursuing an art career.

Qiana’s latest series of collages, The Reinforcements, was inspired by archival images of her mother, who worked in sales at the Rugol Trading Corporation’s NYC offices in the late 1960s. This collage work has emerged from from the artist’s ongoing project titled @WorkingWOC: Towards a History of Women of Color in the Workplace - a multimedia archive that visualizes the labor history of Black and immigrant women of color in America’s workplace.

Limited by the minimal archival materials available, Qiana created her own speculative representations of the corporate labor history of women of color in the US. This marginalized workforce of women, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, continue to lack representation in leadership roles, receive minimal support for career advancement, face day-to-day race and gender discrimination, and consistently earn less than their white counterparts. Through collages of archival images from fashion and office supply magazines, Qiana intervened in this gap in the historical record to center these women's agency and pursuit of financial independence within late-stage capitalism.

The imagery Qiana created on top of these interoffice envelopes allude to the interior, emotional world of the office secretary or low-level employee (typically of the female gender). These thoughts and concerns (feelings of inferiority, internalized pressure to perform, office gossip, worries about domestic and family responsibilities, etc) naturally coexist alongside the expectations and deadlines of the job at hand.

Qiana Mestrich is an interdisciplinary artist, photo historian, writer. Born and raised in New York City to immigrant parents from Panama and Croatia, Mestrich's autobiographical artwork and research engages issues around Black, mixed-race identity, motherhood/mothering and women’s corporate labour histories. Mestrich’s work is held in various private collections and has been exhibited worldwide including the international Triennial RAY Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain and London Art Fair’s Photo50. Her forthcoming book, Decolonization and Diversity in Contemporary Photography: The Dodge & Burn Interviews will be published by Routledge in 2025.

www.qianamestrich.com

.