Hope house

de Simon Fujiwara, Thomas Trummer

Hope House is a full-scale replica of the Anne Frank House Museum reconstructed within the Kunsthaus Bregenz. A building within a building, a museum within a museum, the ambitious installation takes its inspiration from a build your own model kit of the Anne Frank House Fujiwara bought in the museum gift shop in Amsterdam. For the first time, we can experience the Anne Frank House as a giant sculpture, split across three floors of the Kunsthaus Bregenz. Just as in the original house, visitors will wind through the narrow dimly lit corridors, pass through a replica of the moveable bookcase that hid the Frank family from the persecution by the National Socialists, and enter into the confined spaces of the Secret Annex. On visiting the Anne Frank House, Fujiwara learned that much of the original house has been reconstructed for historical effect. Yet, this doesn't seem to affect the real emotional power of the experience for the millions of visitors that return each year. Why Fujiwara picks up these contradictions in an extremely precise and sensitive manner; his universe is populated with complex and perverse narratives that form a highly unique practice encompassing video, installation, sculpture, and performance. For Fujiwara it is our desire for fantasy beyond authenticity, beyond even truth, that allows the most cherished part of our humanity to flourish compassion, creativity, and idealism. Exhibition Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (27.01. - 08.04.2018).