Simon Fujiwara Artist Talk

Saturday, December 12
12:00pm—1:30pm CT
Online event
FREE and open to the public

Streaming options:
Join the Zoom meeting (Passcode: 942934)
Watch the live stream on YouTube

British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara examines our simultaneous quest for authenticity and fantasy in tourist attractions, historical icons, “edu-tainment,” and the culture we habitually consume. Hope House is an ongoing exhibition built upon years of study into the legacy of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who became famous for the diary she wrote whilst in hiding from the Nazis. Her ascension from a regular girl to a renowned historical figure provides a case study, lens, and continuum for Fujiwara to present objects and artworks that sample from, and survey today’s socio-political media-scape. Since 2017 he has been erecting life-scale replicas of the Anne Frank House’s “build-you-own” model as exhibition architecture to present artifacts collected and analyzed from a diary-like perspective. Inspired by Anne’s personal form of record keeping, as well as the way her story embodies an enduring stand against the escalating dangers of a fascist regime, Fujiwara confronts embedded pathologies within pop culture. Collaging objects from the present into his enlarged facsimile of the House, he sculpts the everyday into an evolving portrait of what happens when hopeful ideologies meet the mechanisms of consumer culture.

Simon Fujiwara was born in London in 1982, and spent his childhood moving between Japan, Europe, and Africa. He received a BA in architecture from Cambridge University in 2005 and earned an MFA from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2008. Fujiwara has had solo exhibitions at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2018), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2018), The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2016), the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge (2014), and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2011). His work has been featured in a number of group exhibitions including Manual Override, The Shed, NY (2019); Is This Tomorrow?, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); I knOw yoU, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013); and Roppongi Crossing 2013: OUT OF DOUBT, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2013). Fujiwara’s work has also been presented at the Venice Biennale (2009), São Paulo Biennial (2010), Gwangju Biennial (2012), Shanghai Biennial (2012), Sharjah Biennial (2013), Berlin Biennial (2016), and Istanbul Biennial (2019). He has received numerous honors including the Rome Scholarship, British Academy, Rome (2005); the Iaspis Residency, Gothenburg, Sweden (2010); the Bâloise Art Prize (2010); and the Cartier Award (2010). Fujiwara lives and works in Berlin.

Simon Fujiwara: Hope House is on view at the Blaffer through March 14, 2021.
Explore the exhibition

This public program is supported by Scott & Judy Nyquist.
Image: Courtesy of the artist.