Alienation

In a conversation with my high school literature teacher, he observed that real, authentic experiences have been replaced by ready-made goods. Once, if someone needed a vase, they would shape it by hand from clay; now, they simply purchase a manufactured one from a store, distancing themselves from the act of creation. Later, reading The Society of the Spectacle, I extended this idea further—realizing that, in many cases, we are no longer buying the product itself, but merely its image. Brand logos and visual identities become commodities in their own right, further detaching us from authentic experience.

 

This installation deconstructs this process through the transformation of an ordinary beverage. The real Coca Cola can represents the first stage of alienation: a product mass-produced and purchased rather than created by hand. The second stage manifests as the tissue-wrapped cans, hollow replicas that retain only the brand’s visual identity, further detaching the object from its original essence.

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Tissue, a disposable material used in daily consumption, becomes the medium for this erasure, absorbing traces of authenticity and replacing substance with surface. What remains is a fragile shell—a symbol of the modern consumer experience, where even the “real” product is no longer authentic. As commodities evolve into mere images, the question lingers: does authenticity still exist in contemporary society?

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​Medium: Coca Cola can, tissue, white glue, cardboard, guache