Employee of the Month

Employee of the Month takes a cringecore lens to the question of twenty-first century human migration. What happens when global mobility, aspiration, and cultural stereotypes collide in the form of Emilia, a rabbit mascot sent by a Chinese multinational to represent her firm at the fictional European Mascot Resources Expo?

What desires drive her secret ambition to “bunny-hop” into a better life in Europe—an escape from China’s stagnating economy and increasingly oppressive politics? And what does it mean that her knowledge of Europe is shaped less by lived experience and more by Emily in Paris?

As Emilia’s story unfolds, we ask: how do fantasies of belonging meet the realities of tokenism, identity politics, and the “model minority” myth that many East Asian emigrants face? Can one truly escape one’s place of origin, or does migration simply shift the terms of constraint?

Through this project, Ping-Hsiang Wang, Yi-Wei Tien and Dandan Liu are researching how satire, performance, and the absurd might open space for thinking about national identity, cultural aspiration, and the contradictions of global labour. Rather than offering answers, Employee of the Month seeks to stage the instability of belonging itself.