Simon Fujiwara’s Rebekkah was purchased for Leeds Art Gallery through our Collections Committee. Established in 2012, the committee selects and buys works by early and mid-career artists to gift to regional museums across the UK.

Rebekkah feeds into existing narratives within the collections at Leeds Art Gallery and helps to chart the development of life-size figure sculpture and portrait sculpture from the 19th century. The work is inspired by a 16 year old girl from Hackney, Rebekkah, who was one of the protagonists of the 2011 London Riots. Rebekkah was asked by Fujiwara to travel to China to take part in a unique social experiment, where her access to social media was restricted and she visited factories manufacturing the objects she aspired to own and took for granted (fashion clothing, mobile phones, flat-screen TVs). The trip culminated with a viewing of the Terracotta Warriors, after which Rebekkah was taken to a factory where casts were made of her body to be assembled into modern day versions of the warriors. Up to 100 figures were created in this assembly line technique, shifting Rebekkah to a new position: a representative of a new breed of British-born warrior and a soldier for social change.

*image (left)
Simon Fujiwara,
Rebekkah (2012),
one hundred, terra-cotta dyed, life sized, cast plaster female figures,
dimensions variable, production photograph,
courtesy the artist