Human existence often feels like a race we never agreed to run; a subconscious marathon through the rat race of materialism and climbing, social status. We're caught in a system that imposes a looming, ticking clock on our lives, dictating when we should achieve certain milestones: graduate by twenty-two, start a career and invest by twenty-five, buy a house and start a family by thirty. However, we never cross the perpetually moving finish line because the expectations of life keep moving too.  

The Endless Race explores the tension of the individual and the systematic control of the rat race through the lens of abject theory. Abjection reveals the human urge to conform for the sake of survival, and how anything that deviates from the norm is cast aside. Participating in the rat race of the American Dream is suffocating, yet breaking free from it brings a different kind of fear: the anxiety of not surviving outside the system.  

The representation of the finish line and the internalization of manufactured obstacles is presented in The Endless Race with negative space that reads “enemy” and “us.” The negative space recontextualizes the quote by artist Walt Kelly in his anti-pollution Earth Day posters and comic strips, “we have met the enemy, and it is us.”  Kelly references a historical quote from Master Commandant Oliver Perry during the War of 1812 when the United States Navy defeated the British Navy. Commandant Perry wrote to Major General Harrison, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”  Kelly rephrases the quote to be critical of mankind’s tendency to create our own problems.  

These expectations of the rat race are not innate, but human-made and rooted in a Western, industrialized view of success. The narrow perspective of success creates controlling and suffocating pressure of societal norms. We often become our own harshest critics, manufacturing internal obstacles in response to external demands. However, the outcome remains the same, we don’t want to be cast aside so we strive for conformity and chase a “finish line.”