Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When Prada Marfa was unveiled in 2005, Instagram did not exist and mobile phones with cameras were still a rare sight. \u201cWe knew there were art tourists going to Marfa because of the Chinati and Donald Judd foundations,\u201d recalls Ingar Dragset, one half of Elmgreen & Dragset, the Berlin-based duo behind the project. \u201cWe thought maybe rumours would go around in the art world and they would stop by on the way.\u201d Flash forward two decades and the life-size sculpture of a Prada store, located not in Marfa but 30 minutes away in Valentine, Texas, has museum status, and is\u00a0visited by tens of thousands of people every year. Beyonc\u00e9 has been photographed leaping in the air in front of it, and it has appeared on The Simpsons (Homer relieved himself on the premises). Gossip Girl\u2019s Lily\u00a0van der Woodsen has a Prada Marfa artwork in her Upper East Side apartment. It has become a must-visit destination in the state, even for those who\u00a0have little interest in art and others who, despite the coverage, still think they\u00a0can shop there. This year marks its 20th anniversary. The artists\u2019 intention was to let Prada Marfa, originally a symbol of gentrification, deteriorate over time. They\u00a0were interested, Dragset says, \u201cin the creative and generative potential of decay\u201d. But also: \u201cWe didn\u2019t think it would be possible to keep it up for very long. Who would care enough to look after it?\u201d Looking back, the pair can see that their work has taken\u00a0on new meaning. Droves of people trek out into the desert, to a town with a population of fewer than 100, to see the installation, which is now maintained. It\u2019s\u00a0surreal and faintly comic how popular it\u2019s become. \u201cYou can have a laugh about yourself as a consumer when you observe this work,\u201d says Dragset.Elmgreen & Dragset originally envisaged a shop with no product inside, a follow-up of sorts to a 2001 show in New\u00a0York where they covered a gallery\u2019s windows with a sign that read \u201copening soon\u201d with the Prada logo beneath. It was\u00a0inspired by the news that a Prada shop\u00a0would be replacing the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, at a time when art dealers\u00a0and galleries were being priced out\u00a0of the\u00a0area. A Prada store popping up\u00a0in the\u00a0middle of the desert\u00a0was an extension of the same ideas. It\u2019s the only luxury boutique where you can only window shop\u201cWe didn\u2019t ask Prada permission to do it,\u201d Michael Elmgreen says of that 2001 show. \u201cBut since this was permanent, we thought maybe it was the right thing to ask.\u201d Yvonne Force Villareal of the Art Production Fund, the organisation that the\u00a0artists approached to help realise the work, reached out to the Fondazione Prada having heard that Miuccia Prada was a fan of Elmgreen & Dragset\u2019s work and had visited Marfa herself in the 1990s. Villareal not only got permission to\u00a0use the Prada logo, but also a swatch of the\u00a0mint-green colour used\u00a0in the boutiques, architectural dimensions to create accurate shelving and pedestals, and\u00a020 pairs of shoes and six bags from the\u00a0AW05 collection to display within. The sculpture was almost located in\u00a0Nevada. \u201cWe liked the sound of it:\u00a0Pra-da\u00a0Ne-va-da,\u201d Elmgreen laughs. But\u00a0Marfa,\u00a0home to Donald Judd\u2019s foundation\u00a0and the\u00a0artistic community that\u00a0followed, was a\u00a0better fit. \u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0like a shrine in the landscape\u00a0that you\u00a0need to make\u00a0a pilgrimage\u00a0to,\u201d says Elmgreen. Within three days of its opening, the site was vandalised: it was spray-painted with graffiti and burgled (someone used a pick-up truck to pull the\u00a0door off and steal shoes\u00a0and bags). \u201cIt was\u00a0pretty radical, and I\u00a0think it shocked the artists,\u201d said Virginia Lebermann, co-founder of Ballroom Marfa, which co-produced the project. Prada graciously sent six more handbags, which now have cut-out bottoms; the single right-footed shoes were replaced by their left-foot counterparts. I first visited what Elmgreen calls \u201cthe only luxury boutique in the world where you can only window-shop\u201d in 2007. My impression, as recorded in my notes, was of\u00a0\u201cshattered glass and bugs inside\u201d. Today the site is regularly cleaned and repaired out of courtesy to locals. The last time the artists visited a few years ago, \u201cwe were kind of shocked to see the installation unchanged,\u201d Dragset says. \u201cEverything was almost as we\u00a0had left it many years prior.\u201d The only development is the ever-growing collection of locks, trinkets, shoes and other objects that\u00a0adorn the building.The artists are currently thinking about\u00a0how they might mark Prada Marfa\u2019s birthday, and working on a series of new pavilions or \u201csiblings\u201d, starting with a bar in\u00a0Thailand that only opens one day a month. But Marfa will always hold a special\u00a0place in their hearts. \u201cIt reached out\u00a0to an audience that is not interested in\u00a0art,\u201d says Elmgreen. As Villareal says: \u201cIt\u00a0speaks to everybody.\u201d 14880 US-90, Valentine, TX 79854, ballroommarfa.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When Prada Marfa was unveiled in 2005, Instagram did not exist and mobile phones with cameras were still a rare sight. \u201cWe knew there were art<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212484,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212482\/revisions\/212484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}