Words by Earlywn Covington
In various ways the artworks of Simon Fujiwara encompass different aspects of ruined worlds, whether they are architectural, societal or personal. But if you expect a gloom fest you would be disappointed. From theme parks to Fifty Shades of Grey, Fujiwara’s is an individual but recognisable contemporary memory and in a new group show that questions the socio-cultural and ethical issues surrounding tech that facilitates mass surveillance or predictive policing, Disney is the inspiration if not the medium.
Simon Fujiwara Portrait, 22017. Photo © Miro Kuzmanovic
The question invariably comes up, do we really need, yet another, design week, trade fair or biennial of architecture, art or otherwise? Heavy sigh. In any given autumn one can fly from city to city on at least one continent, or in Istanbul’s case, a seventh. The Turkish city’s 16th Biennial of contemporary art curated by Nicolas Bourriaud and entitled The Seventh Continent is a case in point. I went for the weekend. It was my first time in Istanbul, and I was curious to see what Bourriaud, the French relational aesthetics guru, co-founder of Palais de Tokyo, and previous director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, would come up with. The only person I came away with was Simon Fujiwara.
Okay that’s not exactly true according to my Instagram, there were actually two other artists that moved me enough to post: Eloise Hawser and Ozan Atalan. As for the rest of the Biennial, quite honestly I’ve seen better graduation shows, but Fujiwara’s work, startlingly enough, pushed me enough, to make enquiries of how I might reach out to the artist himself.
I started with an email to his gallery in New York, then a Facebook message and friend request. Nothing. Then I thought, oh he was born in London in 1982. He’s not really millennial as much as he is transitional, so maybe Instagram. Two tries and ten days later I was sitting down with him at his studio in Berlin.
Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
We started with a flashback to Istanbul: a year before Fujiwara had visited a ‘theme park trade fair’ in Amsterdam where he had met a Turkish amusement park manufacturer.
“It is the biggest attractions fair in Europe. It’s like a regular trade fair except the booths were dedicated to roller coaster wheels, or cuddly toys, or cable systems. It’s this really weird mix of fantasy and pragmatism, and everything is for sale. To see this de-pragmatism joining with the bigger picture of creating fun, attraction, and pleasure was a place to start.”
The work Fujiwara showed was exhibited on the second floor of the not-yet-opened, recently built (and unfinished) Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Museum, along with 37 other artists in various mediums and talent. The venue lent itself to Fujiwara in a way. The architecture, typical glass and steel, the occasional and uncompleted feel of a building in construction, lay in unambiguous contrast to the infinitesimal detail of Fujiwara’s project and presentation. And even the artist himself.
“In my first research I was travelling to Istanbul to meet these theme park producers and I found out about this huge industry that partly due to government initiatives, as described by the companies themselves, want to create some identity to solidify national identity, create more economy and give people more fun and diversion.”
It’s a Small World (2019), is a collection of 13 meticulously detailed architectural miniatures. The figures, or literal heads, were sourced from the waste of the Turkish theme park manufacturer, and include the Pink Panther, Bart Simpson, Asterix…
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (Castle), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
Each salvaged piece is then transformed into a series of microuniverses that weave together tightly other narratives that the artist has grafted onto the storybook characters of our collective childhood. For Fujiwara, the material that formed the piece “had the quality of ruined world.
From a starchitect-designed museum placed amidst a group of derelict Disney characters to a prison rotating around the face of the Joker or a crypt within the head of Asterix, the symbols of industrialised entertainment have been converted into a form that begs many questions, but the first that comes to mind is why create a miniature in the first place?
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (Market), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
“Personally I find miniatures repulsive because they evoke in us a feeling of power; this longing to have control in a world where we have none. The reverse of that is objectification, which could create empathy, or generate a bond and recognition of the things that you know. Things that might be terrifying or scary become easily manageable. More importantly I wanted people to be able to recognise themselves in the work.”
The deeper purpose of the work is perhaps to mirror a story-world where the miraculous and magical become entwined with the undesired of everyday life, the lost memory of childhood and maybe even the banality of the routine present.
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (Whorehouse), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
“There was no storyline for the project. It was total submission. There was no point in fighting these images because they are now part of us. All of them. We know what the Incredible Hulk is, Bart Simpson, the Pink Panther. The moment you try to do something against it, you lose, so maybe I can get it back through hyper-constructed precision.”
The viewer has only to look. The viewer has only to blend personal meaning within a bigger story. The viewer’s story, or the viewer’s individual memory, is the counterpoint of Fujiwara’s process. It’s also something that the artist does not take for granted. And he talks about his drive to speak specifically “about how the world itself has become more based on theme park principles and why that is.”
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (School), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren 
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (Factory), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
London-born, Fujiwara was one of four international artists under 40 living in Germany that was nominated for the 2019 Preis der nationalgalerie. The morning before arriving at his studio, I went to the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum to see the work.
The first dates from 2017 and is from the Fifty Shades Archive. Upon entering, you notice that the artist has framed the first pages of Chapter 11, which is the contract between the two protagonists, Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. One can’t help but think am I making a meta-contract with the artist himself?
Simon Fujiwara. Fifty Shades Archive, 2017 – ongoing Books, aluminium, plywood, clear varnish Dimensions variable. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Andrea Rossetti
Then there is a narrow corridor created by the books themselves. The books were mined from the Oxfam public donation inventory, which had received so many donations that they launched a social media campaign to stop it. The books are impossible to recycle due to the toxic glue used in the binding. Fujiwara snatched them all up and in the process has created the world’s first ‘one book archive.’
Simon Fujiwara. The Contract, 2019. Contract pages from used Fifty Shades of Grey novels mounted. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Andrea Rossetti
The linear book-lined corridor leads to a dead-end, so when turning left, the second work, staged at a considerable distance from the viewer is Likeness (2018), a life-like wax figure of Anne Frank sitting in profile at a desk and writing in her diary. Right in front, but also at distance from the sculpted Anne, are two monitors that show through video fragmentary details of the distanced Anne. Fujiwara used a rotating robotic camera arm to film and capture the immobilised Anne.
Simon Fujiwara. Likeness, 2018. Wax sculpture, vintage desk, chair, lamp and objects, handrail, two-channel video (4K, color, sound). Dimensions variable Video duration 19:34 min. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Collection Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin
The third work is what only can be described of as a greyish looking pantsuit in a plastic garment bag underneath plexiglass entitled What Beyoncé Wore to the Anne Frank House (2018). The outfit is described in the leaflet material as a sky-blue twin-set uniform from British high-street retailer, Topshop. It was worn by Beyoncé on her trip to the house in 2014, and was immediately memorialised when she posted a selfie on Instagram. Within 45-minutes the outfit was sold out worldwide. This didn’t stop Fujiwara. He found out that the fabric was sourced from Italy, ordered it, then had it remade by hand.
Simon Fujiwara. What Beyoncé wore to the Anne Frank House, 2019. Blue outfit in plastic wrap on silver hanger, hung on wall. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Andrea Rossetti
The fourth work, which was also shown in a smaller scale at Esther Schipper Berlin’s booth at the 2019 FIAC in Paris, is an over-sized, larger than life depiction, of the same work. It is earrings representing the severed heads of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI hanging from the guillotine. Fujiwara refers to the work in one of his Instagram posts as, “the first democratic execution device – one format for all classes – the easyjet execution.” He goes on to describe them as looking as confused as the message they carry, while one of his followers entreats him to “make them wearable.”
Subtle is not a word that comes to mind when encountering Fujiwara’s work for the first time, but could be described instead as something that is inevitable. When I arrived at his studio, in one corner were recent acquisitions from his latest trip to New York: a framed American flag and document certifying that the flag that was flown over the memorial on 24 September 2019, and alongside it a water bottle and baseball cap with the 9/11 logo.
Fujiwara wasn’t in Manhattan for either research or tourism, he was presenting his latest project Empathy I. Featured in the group exhibition Manual Override (13 November 2019 – 12 January 2020) at The Shed, the show questions the socio-cultural and ethical issues surrounding tech that facilitates mass surveillance or predictive policing. Fujiwara’s own project is a two-person immersive simulator experience based on his own personal memories of theme parks like Disneyland Paris or tourist sites like Neuschwanstein Castle.
Simon Fujiwara (detail). A Dramatically Enlarged Set of Golden Guillotine Earrings Depicting the Severed Heads of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, 2019. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin
He originally developed the project in 2018 with Lafayette Anticipations, the cultural and artistic arm of Fondation Lafayette, which belongs to the French department store Galeries Lafayette, and whose purpose is to act as a catalyser that provides creators with the unique and necessary conditions to produce, experiment and exhibit.
Fondation Lafayette has accompanied the artist since 2014 when he initiated the first residency programme that embodied a sculpture, performance and film entitled New Pompidou. Previous director of the foundation, François Quintin, had many things to say about Fujiwara, especially about the beginning of his career in 2013 when he was doing work “focused on his own biography, his own history, a lot of his own personal experiences. What it is like to be a young British guy, half-Japanese, gay. We bought the project, Rehearsal for a Reunion, which has all of these elements. Yet when he started his residency, this became a turning point for him. The shift for him was the New Pompidou piece. He started thinking that architectural elements could be an important component in his way of thinking. He could inhabit worlds that are well thought out, balanced and organised. He could even investigate forms of decaying, which is a form of the future. He realised that his work could be about restaging. He visited Disneyland Paris and Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine in Versailles which had recently been refurbished to the point that it seemed fake. Fake then being the expression of something that is collective.”
Fujiwara studied architecture at Cambridge, and grew up in Cornwall, where he told me that his mum started the first Montessori in their house. (In his Berlin studio there is a giant mural that he recently retrieved from home. The painting is a figurative and colourful array of characters from Winnie the Pooh to Disney princesses.) He had received a much-coveted scholarship to Harrow, one of England’s oldest and most prestigious public schools, a place for princes and the future ruling elite alike, and unsurprisingly a moment in time that would inadvertently become fodder for Fujiwara in a project that would resurface many years later, and is now being shown at ARKEN, the Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, near Copenhagen.
Joanne (2016/2018), a film and large-scale image exhibition focuses on one of his former Harrow teachers, who became the victim of a tabloid newspaper scandal. The work combines freestanding structures with one that includes LED screens where an image is shown on one side and a video on the other. The content is larger than life and so is the subject of the story.
Joanne was Fujiwara’s art teacher at Harrow from 2000-2002. A former Miss Northern Ireland beauty pageant winner, artist, teacher and champion boxer, several year later boys at the school discovered and then circulated topless photographs of her that were taken privately and had been found in the photo lab. The ongoing media campaign wreaked havoc on her public image and career. Fujiwara has staged an emotionally complex exhibition. Exploring the deep-seated mechanisms inherent in individual and group segmentation, Fujiwara gracefully undertakes a non-judgmental look into the identity surrounding female objectification.
Simon Fujiwara. It’s a Small World (School), 2019. Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial. Produced with the support of Ayşegül & Ömer Özyürek and Goethe-Institut Istanbul. Presented with the support of British Council. Exhibition view: 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Brussels; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Gio Marconi, Milan; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Sahir Ugur Eren
“The only way out is through my work. I don’t believe in it as an ideology, more of an experiment. I do believe in ideology as a function and a power, but it just never worked for me. I couldn’t buy into it. Not because of any political thing, but because of the contradictions. Everything is contradicted all the time. Everything. This is why I am so grateful that I am living now, being born now, because how my brain works means that I can enjoy this moment historically.”
Returning to my discussion with Quintin from Fondation Lafayette, he talked about Fujiwara’s work as, “The notion of using what already exists. Not making things. But just trying to trigger how things that exist become embodied in our collective subconscious. It’s about our fear, and how our fear can be expressed in restaging things from the past.”
He goes on to say that Fujiwara’s work “does not deliver a message. It is both black and white at the same time.” When prodded further he likened Fujiwara’s work to Marcel Duchamp’s idea that you can’t just do an artwork which fits into good taste.
In that line of thinking Fujiwara’s refrain from commentary is quite extraordinary. It is the unsaid. The work is a manifestation of where we all are, and what we might not let ourselves articulate, or better explained by Fujiwara himself.
“It comes through a process of decolonising the images within myself. There is nothing original in any of this. It’s just a mash-up of things I’ve seen and experienced. It is the thing we all know. Everything that is so clear and obvious to us that it becomes invisible, but once they are piled together it becomes horrific through hyper-focus. When I talk about decolonising myself, I am just attempting to let myself go towards whatever story has already been told.”
Simon Fujiwara. Fifty Shades Archive, 2017 – ongoing Books, aluminium, plywood, clear varnish Dimensions variable. Exhibition view: Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019. Courtesy the artist; Dvir Gallery, Brussels & Tel Aviv; Gió Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo © Andrea Rossetti
After the interview, the return to Paris and the overall repiecing of Fujiwara’s work and experience, several questions keep cropping up. How do we prioritise what we care about? How do we get back our responsiveness and give time to another type of focus? How do we fight back for our attentiveness that is scattered, and our memory that is oddly but evenly fragmented?
In the international release of the 2014 trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey, the world discovered a slowed-down version of Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, which doesn’t feature Jay-Z, just the artist herself. I tapped on Spotify. Maybe Fujiwara’s art is an experiment for love to make the best of all of us. One thing’s for sure: baby you got me.
Preis der Nationalgalerie, Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, smb.museum
Joanne, ARKEN, Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark , arken.dk
Simon Fujiwara, various works by the artist in the permanent collection of Fondation Lafayette, lafayetteanticipations.com