Prada’s current ad campaign for its Spring/Summer 2026 collection is disturbing, and it’s no surprise that it was created by an artist known for disturbing video art and sculptures: Jordan Wolfson, whose past works have featured spinning robots, chained puppets, and other horrific objects.
Wolfson’s art is famous, and in some cases infamous, for its depictions of physical and emotional violence. For example, his VR work for the 2017 Whitney Biennial allowed visitors to witness a man being beaten by a version of Wolfson himself wielding a baseball bat. Another VR piece produced last year at the Fondation Beyeler Museum outside Basel, Switzerland, involved body-swapping participants without giving viewers much warning in advance.
Related articles
Prada’s ad campaign thankfully features no such carnage, but it does maintain Wolfson’s ongoing fascination with bizarre digital avatars. The still image features a series of models, including actors Carey Mulligan, Nicholas Hoult and Damson Idris, standing next to larger-than-life birds, looking slightly menacing.
Wolfson first made a name for himself as a video artist, and the Prada campaign also includes a brief moving image piece, said to be his first foray into the medium. River Boat Songhis critically acclaimed 2017-18 release. In the new video, Prada models numbly repeat the word “I” several times before finally uttering the words “I am.” These words also form the title of the event, titled “I, I, I, I am… PRADA”.
As Wolfson’s subjects spoke the words aloud, the birds near them—which, given their sheen and unnatural size, appeared to be computer-generated, or at least computer-altered—slowly moved around. When actress and model Hunter Schafer appears here, a bird-human hybrid wearing black leather boots raises his hands ominously behind his back, looks directly at the viewer, and takes a deep breath. Schaeffer smiled and seemed oblivious to the creature behind her.
In a statement accompanying the campaign, Prada praised Wolfson’s contribution to opening up “a constant possibility, a multiplicity of identities and beings, the essence of Prada, of how to be perceived and re-perceived, through campaign conventions that are constantly called into question.” This seems like a contrived reading of a campaign that aims to crawl out and in in equal measure. If anything, Wolfson’s latest work seems to undercut fashion brands’ unique ability to undercut the art of collaboration.
In recent years, brands from Dior to Louis Vuitton have tapped artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Cosima von Bonin, Tyler Mitchell, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Julien Nguyen and Isabella Ducrot to collaborate, both to create fresh work for their runway shows and to help conceptualize campaigns like Prada’s new spot. Trendsetting american artEmily Watlington wrote in 2024, “We should ask, does fashion support art or embrace art?”
