If the Shoe Fits: Prada Marfa as Cultural Capital

Created by Berlin-based artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in 2005, Prada Marfa has become a pop culture spectacle in the middle of the West Texas desert. The sculpture is a hyper-realistic reconstruction of a Prada boutique, located outside of Valentine, Texas, over two hours southeast of El Paso. The work has generated an abundance of press. Prada Marfa has been the victim of a series of attacks of vandalism, some claiming to be “artworks” in themselves. It has become an obligatory location for selfies and has been placed in the limelight via celebrity visits. The sculpture has also been accused of being an advertisement and was almost removed by the Texas Department of Transportation. Prada Marfa’s reputation has since flourished, undergoing a transformation from reviled work to a destination and a cultural spectacle for both those inside and outside the art world. While Prada Marfa’s reputation has blossomed, there has been little critical scholarly investigation into the history and public reception of the work.Prada Marfa was ostensibly created as a readymade critique of consumer culture by appropriating signs of high-end luxury brands and using strategies of minimalism as display. Despite these intentions the sculpture produces cultural capital for the global corporate identity of Prada. Prada Marfa’s history, as a work of site-specific public art, has created a disjuncture between the work’s intention and effect. This paper will argue that the sculpture produces cultural capital for Prada by offering itself through its own semiological initiative, as interchangeable with any other commodity, into a network of consumption. Although visitors to Prada Marfa are denied access to Prada commodities, they are able to consume the brand through the sculpture’s semiological agency within the hyperreal systems of consumer signs and symbols. Using Jean Baudrillard’s theories of sign-value and fetish, this paper will consider how Prada Marfa is not merely a representation of consumer culture but a simulation and an active participant.