Perfect Model
2018 - ongoingA look at fake landmarks in the United States and China, where replicas turn cultural icons into tourist traps. In these manufactured spaces, visitors chase a sense of authenticity they'll never quite find, while workers maintain the illusion—all part of an elaborate performance of cultural tourism. The project explores an uncomfortable truth about our globalized world: we've built a society where copies have become destinations in their own right, where cultural identity can be reshaped at will, and where our hunger for escapism has turned heritage into fantasy. These imitations reveal not just how culture gets turned into a product, but how we've come to prefer our history sanitized, our traditions neatly wrapped up, and our experiences carefully controlled. As our appetite for easy escapism grows, we risk turning cultural heritage into nothing more than a sellable spectacle.
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence, … truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred.”
- Feuerbach,