I am therefore I shop, solo exhibition at Salongen , Stavanger, Norway, 2020

Online shopping and e-commerce companies have been in the news during the Covid-19 lockdown. As homebound people seek fulfilment, online shopping has increased, pushing the online business practises into focus again. Inhumane treatment of workers from production through to delivery has been exposed. Furthermore, we know online shopping is environmentally unfriendly, unsustainable and it kills our local businesses. Despite our wokeness, our appetite for online fulfilment remains insatiable. 

Online shopping has transformed consumer behaviour and expectations with its focus on convenience. You can have it all, delivered to your home at any time. The expectation of fulfilment has accelerated and anything that fails to fit your body, your life, even your mood can be returned. The reasons for return are generic, irrelevant and may not even be true. The power to embrace or reject finally rests with us, the consumer and highlights our society’s entitlement.

‘I am therefore I shop’ is a reference to Barbara Kruger’s ‘I shop therefore I am’. Kruger’s slogan from the 1980’s asks whether the public is no longer defined by what it thinks, but rather by what it owns. By reversing the slogan, the consumer's role becomes passive, almost ambivalent. It exposes our society’s entitlement and passiveness as if we had no choice but to shop, as if shopping was part of us. 

Photos taken by Helle Navratil in the exhibition space Salongen, Stavanger, Norway.