Alex Prager, Holiday Party, 2020, © Alex Prager, photo courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
Los Angeles–based artist Alex Prager is known for making photographs and short films embellished with Technicolor fantasy but grounded in the pains and pleasures of the everyday. In this installation, Prager satirizes a specific part of working life, drawing on pop culture tropes to create a simulation of office holiday parties. The artist animates figurative sculptures with costumes, makeup, props, and sound, and places them in recognizable office-party situations, creating a strange yet celebratory scene that can be experienced in the round.
To bid farewell to the work holiday parties of the past, Prager teamed up with Miller Lite, to memorialize their cringiest moments in a campaign launching today. Hyperrealist sculptural figures created by the artist and featured in the campaign will be featured in an art installation on display outdoors at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and in a virtual experience at LACMA.org.
“Farewell Work Holiday Parties” will be supported with robust marketing support including national TV, social, digital and public relations. Click here to view the featured campaign video. The program rounds out Miller Lite’s full holiday programming that includes a new lineup of ‘ugly’ holiday knitwear and refreshed holiday packaging.
“With many companies nixing the traditional holiday party, we’re focused on the silver lining – more time with a few real friends, which is what Miller Time is all about,” said Courtney Carter Dugan, director of activation for Miller Lite. “Not having to make awkward small talk or being forced to take photobooth pictures with coworkers is a holiday gift in and of itself.”
The campaign, created in partnership by DDB Chicago and San Francisco, began with a simple question: if the pandemic cancelled traditional work holiday parties, would anyone miss them? Probably not. Enter: Tis Miller Time. When dreaming up a party filled with an array of characters in uncanny situations, the team initially referenced Alex Prager’s work, and was ultimately able to partner with her to create the artwork.
“Miller Lite and DDB trusted me to make 15 life sculptures with complete creative autonomy. It’s one of those dream collaborations that comes along once every five years or so,” said Alex Prager, artist behind the Miller Lite campaign. “It touches on many things I’ve been exploring in my artistic practice – the line between reality and artifice and how we find ways to connect as humans through both raw emotion and performance, or projected realities. This year has been a disaster in terms of connecting with people we share common realities with, so I was very excited to work on a project that is ultimately about love and the human condition seen through an elegant and humorous lens.”
