Throughout my early teens, a large chunk of my out-of-school socialising revolved around shopping centres. Large and largely soulless, these monuments to consumerism were replicated through towns up and down the country, usually with the same comforting cohort of Body Shops, Holland & Barretts and Auntie Anne’s. Growing up in an OAP-filled village, these multi-story meccas held a certain metropolitan appeal and I remember relishing feeling like a real teenager after being told off for taking too many photos while trying on fluorescent pink heels and metallic headbands in Primark. The possibilities were endless–booth after booth of plastic tat, cheaply-made T-shirts and an expansive array of glittery palettes and overly scented body butters destined to be smeared on every inch of exposed skin. As I got older and less into Tammy Girl, the novelty dulled but the inevitability remained, the Shopping Centre was an easy place to while a few hours away, particularly during the aimless years of my undergrad when I would wander in and out of the H&M and Boots that had definitely seen better days.
Fast forward ten or so years and the death of the high street has swept the nation, rigor mortis shutting down teen-run HMVs and drying up drab water features. The shopping centre exists as a relic in our collective consciousness, a vaguely industrial and dust-filled space that feels both familiar and alien–a trope that exists on-screen in All American technicolour but fails to materialise in real life.
Evoking memories of Saturday afternoons spent loitering in pre-teen packs, Berlin-based artist Hanna Stiegeler explores the theatre of modern commercialism through her series Arcaden. Titled after the German equivalent of the middle-England shopping mall, the series sees Stiegeler layer screen prints and thick gesso fans over abstracted images of escalators, advertisements and in-store architecture. Drawing inspiration from 1870s Pissarro sketches, Stiegeler adopts the impressionist trope used by Pissarro, Degas, and Morisot, the juxtaposition of traditional compositional elements and mundane, monochrome photographs used to explore contemporary commercial spaces. In Arcaden, Stiegeler shifts away from the impressionists’ focus on bucolic idylls and natural scenes, instead concentrating on the site of the shopping centre as a cultural and commercial phenomenon. These centres become the backdrop for her exploration of modern consumer culture, capturing the essence of these spaces as hubs of contemporary life and commerce.
In Arcaden, the shopping centre emerges as more than just a commercial hub–it becomes a symbol of modern consumerism. The “mall” remains a carefully-crafted environment, outdated as it may be and the attempts to ensnare shoppers through multi-sensory experiences continue to trickle into how we shop today. Shopping was and still is, a spectator sport. For as long as we’ve been buying, we’ve been trying on and telling each other about our latest sprees, comparing our spending to contemporaries, suppressing jealousy or dialling up smugness depending on the audience. Stiegeler’s exploration of branding and architecture demonstrates how commerce not only mirrors our societal desires but embodies the core values and aspirations of contemporary consumer culture, which, in my case, was to blossom into a bleach blonde 16-year-old with racoon eyeliner and heinous New Look heels.
The shopping centre as we once knew it may have died a timely death, but the spectacle of consumerism remains an ever-present spectre in our society. You only need to spend a couple of minutes in the TikTok doom-scroll to be hit with a barrage of try-ons and haul videos, the modern equivalent of crowding into a changing room with 300,000 of your parasocial besties. Acquiring things, whether it be a double-layered Tami girl tank top or something a little chicer, isn’t merely for our own material satisfaction but, equally, it is a way of positioning ourselves among our peers and solidifying ourselves in the social order. While our 19th-century counterparts were flexing their muscles with elegantly painted, hand-crafted fans imported from Asia, the 21st-century equivalents are equally as engaged in demonstrating their status. Whether through demonstrating taste or simply wealth, we are still similarly looking for approval and an affirmation that, yes, you’ve got it right this time.
Stiegeler’s preoccupation with the semiotics of shopping is evident through her earlier work, particularly Infinite Library and Shopping Addict. Repurposing user photos from Depop and other thrifty apps, Infinite Library comprises a series of screen prints blurring the line between low-res user-generated content and big-budget glossy editorials. Rather than presenting two juxtaposing methods of marketing, Stiegeler’s series explores the similarities between the two, with users adopting exaggerated, editorial poses to flog their Y2k wares and make an easy £8.50 plus postage. In an age where incessant content creation is as easy as pressing a button, it makes sense that every image we take becomes imbued with some sort of marketing strategy, intentional or not. Clothes create a character. Everything we wear contributes to an impression of some sort: that someone is cool or clever or careless, each scrap of fabric contributes to a complete picture of a person, and Infinite Library speaks to that.
Shopping Addict acts as an exaggerated archive of a wardrobe, a blown-up scrapbook of sorts. Depicting Givenchy-style Bambi sweatshirts alongside petri dishes of IVF-esque cells, the series builds a disparate impression of an individual’s life, from fertilisation up to baby’s first Farfetch order. By exploring the complexities of modern consumerism, Stiegeler’s work continues to delve into the interplay between branding, architecture, and societal values, portraying commercial environments as complex cultural landscapes, both of the brick-and-mortar and online variety. While shopping may be seen as a frivolous pursuit for the Carrie Bradshaws among us, how we choose to spend our money and time says something about who we are and, more interestingly, who we want the world to think we are. The shopping centres may have closed and the teens may have stopped draining every dwindling perfume tester on offer, but our need for newer, brighter and shinier things to obsess and bond over remains as strong as ever.
