An alternative look at objects of desire

Some things you buy into it, some things you don’t. What do those choices, those labels, those status symbols say about you?

The early-career Mexican artist Débora Delmar, or Debora Delmar Corp. as she had branded herself for the purpose of the ‘distribution of her work’, presents a major new site-specific installation at Modern Art Oxford that reflects upon capitalist lifestyle and aspirational aesthetics by posing these questions.

This exhibition culminates the artist’s month-long residency in Oxford during which time she has observed and amassed the stuff of quotidian culture from product packaging to food wrappers in order to make her work for this show idiosyncratically Oxford.

Not entirely dissimilar to Peter Blake’s Self-Portrait with Badges of the consumerist explosion pop-art age of 1961.

Blake’s painted portrait speaks of aspirational self-branding and allegiances in popular culture that suggest interests and achievements; whilst Debora Delmar Corp. adopts and reconfigures the production, branding and merchandising techniques of global corporations through sculpture, video, digital collage and installation.

It’s easy to slip into the habit of creating a narrative around the symbols that people adorn themselves with. From the brand of our footwear, to our mobile phones, through to the cars that we drive, and the labels on our jackets together these things tell a story.

It’s crass, but it’s indicative of who we are or who we want to be; and whether we like it or not, the vast majority of us buy into brand allegiance of one kind or another.

Peer pressure is a powerful thing, and advertising can be oppressive. Debora Delmar Corp. has reinforced this sense of consumerist oppression by scaling up and reconfiguring objects of desire creating an immersive environment for the viewer to be swallowed up inside in the Upper Gallery at Modern Art Oxford.

In creating such an environment the artist highlights the layered manipulative strategies at play in advertising. Strategies that operate, sophisticatedly asserting influence over the public, across multiple physical and digital platforms at spine-chilling speeds.

Debora Delmar Corp.’s work appropriates objects and imagery from mainstream media, to examine the ways in which commodity culture structures our everyday life and routines, perpetuating codified assumptions around class, economics and ethnicity.

Her inclusion of Mexican products alongside objects mass-produced in China and pictures of LA celebrities illustrate the cycle of consumption and promotion at work in local and global contexts.

By using the high finish of branded images, stripped of the commercial context in which they might usually appear, the artist questions and undermines this implicit messaging with which we are bombarded every day.

The work exhibited as part of this exhibition, Upward Mobility, will include a group of ceiling-height banners emblazoned with aspirational imagery found on the social-media page of a bank in Mexico.

The towering banners will be fenced in by a series of kitchen countertops and garden hedges harbouring new sculptures made from found objects.

It was in 2009 while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York in the Land of Opportunity (a country underpinned by cut-throat ambition, limitless aspiration and social climbing), that Debora Delmar became Debora Delmar Corp.

Green Growth

At the same time as she changed the name for the distribution of her work to Debora Delmar Corporation, Delmar also created a ‘DD’ logo, a play on the idea of Debora Delmar being an official, branded and institutionalised entity.

This logo has since appeared in the form of a tattoo on the hips of the model, actress, and singer Cara Delevingne and her friend, the model Jourdan Dunn.

The logo has also cropped up as the logo for American hospital chain Dusk to Dawn Urgent Care.

Delmar commented: “Could it be that two or more people come up with the exact same idea for a logo since we’re all exposed to the same corporate graphic design?”

Interestingly, Upward Mobility has been supported by the Government of Mexico as part of the Year of Mexico in UK 2015, an ambitious programme of events devised to demonstrate the diversity of the cultural heritage of Mexico, its rich history and strong traditions.

Thinking about the cultural heritage and the economic and commercial dynamism of Mexico in the context of this exhibition Debora Delmar Corp., the brand, presents a sobering reflection of the state of 21st-century living – not just in Mexico.

Debora Delmar Corp – Upward Mobility
Modern Art Oxford, Pembroke Street 
Until May 17
modernartoxford.org.uk