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Middle Class signed and dated 2025 (lower right) acrylic on canvas 60" x 96" (152 cm x 243 cm) Cedrick Dela Paz's recent social commentary masterpiece, entitled Working Class, captures the dehumanizing cycle of Filipino modern labor and the exploitative effects caused by capitalism. Full of struggle, monotony, and dismal conditions, the Filipino working class is continuously trapped in a perpetual cycle of labor and control. Dela Paz's piece presents a visual and moral indictment of such an exploitative system. With the painting divided into multiple panels representing several scenes found in a factory or corporate building, each layer mirrors several realities of working life, representing workers engaged in repetitive and exhausting conditions. The first panel at the top showcases workers on a desk job while others eat at their plates without a table, all hunched around a tight space—All workers looking bleak and hopeless. Cameras with literal eyes stalking them across the panels like a hawk, ready to report anyone who faltered from their duties. The second panel shows workers on an assembly line packing boxes in a mechanical repetition, all synchronized like robots while on the other side of the wall is a dark tight room showing three people on their hands and feet while gas pumps where embedded on their backs like they were being "recharged"—a literal metaphor of workers being treated like oiled machines rather than humans. The third panel shows a scene where the company hires new people, with the one at the closest with a nametag "Juan" looking directly at the observers while holding a paper stamped as "ENDO" (shortened term for End of Contract), implying the dismal status of short-term employment where workers are dismissed before becoming regular workers. While an employee leans their head in front of a poster slogan entitled "Work! Work! Work!" seemingly giving up on the company's abysmal work conditions. ABOVE: Cedrick Dela Paz © DF Art Agency What's eye-catching about this art piece is that all human figures have a hunchback posture. Visibly showing the heavy exhaustion and resignation of the workers to the system that continues to exploit them like cogs in a machine. The similarity of their appearances (with possible difference being their nametags) completely strips the workers of their identity and individuality. The figures of cameras having literal eyes represent the strict order happening inside the system, depicting a suffocating environment of constant monitoring. Highlighting how employers maintain control over laborers both physically and mentally. Through this masterpiece, Dela Paz perfectly captures the plight of countless Filipino workers stuck in unstable jobs that deprive them of security and dignity. Working Class serves as a direct mirror to the realities of economic inequality where ambition and humanity are crushed under the struggling weight of survival. (Mark John Castañeda)