SITUATION #217

In 2014, Beyoncé visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. She wore a light blue Topshop jumpsuit and posted pictures of herself on Instagram, crouching under images of the teenage Holocaust victim. Shortly after the upload of her Instagram post, the outfit of the US-American singer was sold out everywhere in the world. In What Beyoncé Wore to the Anne Frank House, Simon Fujiwara recreates the Topshop dress in a hand tailored unique creation, with fabric sourced in Milan. Through this seemingly simple gesture, Fujiwara materialises the complexities and paradoxes of contemporary capitalist ideology and the ambiguity that lie within the networked image economy. Images create symbols – from the denied future of the children who died in the Holocaust to the emblem of empowerment of minorities and the politically suppressed – yet they can also be consumed and become complicit in consumerist society. The patchwork of materials that makes the elusive dress confronts the viewer with our conflicts, standing as the disturbing and uneasy symbol of a total commodification. Through its circulation on social media, the networked image enables a desire to turn ideologies into a product to be consumed.