Are sneakers art? Kaws, Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst think so – they created sneaker art for exhibition that shows how mainstream sneaker culture is
- Sneaker culture has come a long way from its unglamorous roots, now commodified in auctions, e-commerce and exhibitions like one opening this week in Hong Kong
- The shoes in the Tongue & Chic show are not for sale, but a later online auction will focus on street wear and street art
The travelling exhibition, which was first shown in New York, has been put together by Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, who says the show displays “thought-provoking and highly covetable works that straddle the divide between fashion and art”.
The blurring of the lines poses the obvious question of whether sneakers can be considered art.
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“I think perhaps the more compelling question isn’t, are sneakers art but rather, why are so many artists engaging with sneakers?” Semmelhack says. “I am very interested in how Daniel Arsham, for example, has used the release of his Adidas collaborations to explore his interest in the passage of time and how Tom Sachs has translated his commitment to the artist’s hand into his collaborations with Nike,” she says.
Semmelhack believes that sneaker culture is “ever shifting and that change, of course, has detractors as well as promoters”. She adds: “What is inarguable is that sneakers carry cultural meaning and are important to a range of people for a range of reasons. For me, as a historian of footwear, exhibitions can be a means of illuminating the cultural importance of objects, and so exhibitions on sneakers make perfect sense.”
The “Tongue + Chic” exhibition moves to Shanghai in November and December. The arty sneakers are not for sale; rather, the British auction house is hoping to build off the buzz of the event to promote its first online-only auction of street wear and street art collectibles, items that are now considered indelible parts of sneaker culture and key parts of collections.
“The exhibition and the auction is another interesting way to reach out to our young collectors,” says Isaure de Viel Castel, head of the department of 20th century and contemporary art at Phillips. Castel notes the crossover in collectors of sneakers and toys produced by the likes of Kaws and adds that “street culture has exploded in recent years, growing from a niche collecting community to a full-blown cultural phenomenon”.
Buoyed by the massive success of its Banksy exhibition in Taipei in March, which had 17,000 visitors in a week, Phillips is leaning heavily on street and sneaker culture for events outside its traditional auction seasons of May and November.
As well as items from Supreme, the auction will have items from Matt Gondek, Arsham, Austin Lee and of course Kaws.
