The new Prada Mode display at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is what eccentric dreams are made of and also gives off what many might call the perfect “Instagram-able” aesthetic. However, the meaning behind Prada’s collaboration with British artist Damien Hirst is far more symbolic and thought out than you might imagine.
Here are a few things you need to know:
Stories of the human body
Prada curated Prada Mode Dubai as a dining, music and lifestyle pitstop for conversational learning experiences. Creating this space in collaboration with Damien Hirst added a new element — it suddenly becomes a space of storytelling, where Hirst visually expresses topics that challenge ideologies and relationships between the human body, life, death, art and science.
Dining in a pharmacy?
Prada Mode was brought to life as a space for multidisciplinary creatives to coexist in an environment full of rich conversation and artistic flow. The medicinal props were created in the UK and shipped to the UAE, where they were conceptually curated to sit in resonance with Hirst’s work, Pharmacy, which was first displayed at the Cohen Gallery back in 1992. Medicine being a recurring theme in Hirst’s work, each element in Prada Mode serves a purpose, highlighting human beings’ reliance on temporary escapes from pain and sickness, escapes that cannot help us when facing death.
A drug for every part
While soaking up the ambience and artistic elements of the space might be your first priority, you might want to study the very elements of the space itself. Looking more closely at the display cabinets full of prescription meds and bottles, Hirst’s intention was to organize them based on parts of the human body. His apothecary cabinets mimic the flow and structure of the body from top to bottom according to the drugs needed to treat each body part – starting with the brain, all the way down to the feet.
An intriguing concept, Prada and Hirst have created a space that sparks both creativity and conversation.
