EMILY

About

Naomi Fitzsimmons (1989) is an artist recently graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art with an MA in Fine Art Media. Living and working in London, she has exhibited most recently at IWM Manchester, Turf Projects, Lychee One Gallery and The Austrian Cultural Forum as well as internationally in Vienna, The Hague, Prague and Berlin. Working predominantly in film, performance and installation Her practice explores the performances and formation of the self as impacted by socio-economic factors.

EMILY is a single channel video installation that documents the artist's experience of temp-work within an all male financial recruitment firm in the city of London. Employed as a secretary on a fixed-term basis, and as the only female member of staff, she was expected to fill the role of her predecessor, an ubiquitous and enigmatic ‘Emily’.

Though never meeting with Emily in person, she became an omnipotent and ever-present entity within Fitzsimmon's work environment; both as a role she was required to perform and an identity she had to fit. 

EMILY then explores the role of the ‘flexi-worker’ or as Guy Standing’s defines  the ‘procariat’, a new social underclass, who categorized by both economic precarity and extreme adaptability suffer from both job and identity instability. Adopting the name as a way to reify this precarious labourer, the work attempts to characterise Emily, as someone who must be both personable and indistinguishable, adaptable but easily forgotten, present but largely invisible; and ultimately the role women play within this characterisation.