Opening Reception – Jennifer Yorke: Employee of the Month
Jennifer Yorke: Employee of the Month
Opening Reception
April 10, 2026
6:00-8:00pm
Doors at 5:30pm
Free and open to the public
Employee of the Month
by Artist Jennifer Yorke
April 10 – July 5, 2026
About the Exhibit:
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.
Employee of the Month is a site-specific installation which responds directly to both the physical and intellectual space encompassed by the International Museum of Surgical Science (IMSS), and the current political climate.
Over the course of her year as an artist-in-residence, Jennifer Yorke heard louder and louder echoes of the texts she researched from the IMSS library in Trump administration statements on health and gender. Yorke captures these echoes in pairings from historical texts in the IMSS collection with excerpts from current government documents. Her 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, Yorke reveals both the historical roots and the absurdity of these notions. Yorke will add to the installation as additional resonances between 19th Century medical presumptions and 21st Century policy statements reverberate over the duration of the exhibition.
Yorke’s 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 her Employee of the Month, Yorke urges the viewer to consider womanhood, performative gender, and constructed personal appearance as deep concepts meriting reflection, particularly when they evoke paths to power for some, but calls for the denial of personal identity for others.
This project would not be possible without the support of the International Museum of Surgical Science and Director of Operations Michelle Rinard, for which artist conveys her immense gratitude.
About the Artist:
Jennifer Yorke examines the uneasy relationship between consumption, identity, the physical body and the natural world through installations, collages, drawings, prints, photographs and artist’s books. Her work is held in more than twenty public collections, including those of the Auckland Gallery of Art; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the Center for the Book Arts and the in New York City; the Huntsville Museum of Art; the Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, and other institutions. Yorke has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, and been honored with over twenty artist’s residencies. Yorke earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which she attended through a Graduate Trustee Fellowship in the Department of Printmedia. She holds a BA cum laude from Carleton College, where she earned Distinction in her Studio Art major. To date, Yorke’s work has been the subject of ten solo exhibitions, and included in over a hundred group exhibitions. She lives with her husband Rob and dog Phoebe in Chicago.
This project is partially supported by a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
The International Museum of Surgical Science acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.