Mudam Luxembourg has been temporarily transformed into Simon Fujiwara’s A Whole New World “theme park” – at times fantastical, at times dystopian, but always a place in which visitors are encouraged to reflect, even when that’s through uncomfortable lenses. 

The exhibition spans almost 20 years’ worth of Fujiwara’s work. The artist says that when he was first sent the map of Mudam, it reminded him of a Disneyland map, causing him to reflect on the parallels between theme parks and museums, from the ticketing to the spaces inside, which seem free but are simultaneously under surveillance.

And such parallels might also hit others from the outset: what visitors may first notice upon entering the exhibition space are the map and signposts, custom-made by Fujiwara, which provide the logic of entering a theme park and its various sections or “rides”. Juxtaposing these friendly pastel signs – and perhaps giving visitors just a small taste of what they’re in for – is the new commission A Whole New World (For Who?), which reimagines one of Pablo Picasso’s best-known works, Guernica, only this time Fujiwara’s own cartoon character, Who the Bær, which he developed during lockdown, figures into the work – as do mobile phones, as the characters seemed to have tried capturing the absurdities of war through images. Fujiwara questions what the artist can do at a time “when we’re suffering from too many images,” and the background sunrise in the painting might promise a new day – or more massive changes for which we’re not ready. From this point, Mudam becomes “Who-ified”, with imaginations of how Who the Bær could take over the museum. 

In the Hall of Mirrors, there’s The Mirror Stage, with a painting that both inspired Fujiwara to become an artist and shaped his understanding that he was gay. On centre stage in this space is Joanne, with images of a former beauty queen and Fujiwara’s former art teacher, who he remembers fondly and with whom he has had a number of philosophical conversations . The images of her, fresh-faced and glowing, show her “authentic new image” – this after she had been subject to tabloids after nude images of her were released without her consent. With Joanne, Fujiwara says he had to grapple with “being disgusted by my objectification of a human that I know, but going, it’s not my fault. I live in a culture where we look at everything as real and unreal. It normally happens that something bothers me, and then I have to interrogate it and understand why I’m part of the problem.”

In It’s a Small World, Fujiwara has taken discarded sculptures from a theme park and worked them into his own miniature worlds with tiny people. They’re colourful, whimsical at first glance – but upon closer inspection, they reveal dystopian microcosms of cityscapes, prison, a religious monument. Music from the Disney theme park ride of the same name plays in the background. It’s a nostalgic ride which is also full of racism and clichés – a “fantasy of a world that never existed, but which I loved as a child,” Fujiwara explains. 

In Hope House, Fujiwara explores Anne Frank. He had visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, where he bought a miniature educational model which, while it served its purpose, made the artist realise how the site had been made into a consumer object. This exhibition space includes enlarged sections of these construction pieces, plus a number of objects that force visitors to consider how the young diarist and the museum have been commercialised. One of the most shocking parts of the exhibition is based upon Fujiwara’s visit to a Madame Tussaud’s in Berlin, where he noticed visitors taking selfies of themselves with Anne Frank, as if she were just another run-of-the-mill icon.

When it comes to his process, Fujiwara says he works in a way that he can “consume and use it all. There’s nothing that’s off limits.” In Syphilis: A Conquest, for instance, he explores the sexually transmitted disease which is theorised to have spread in Europe as a result of Christopher Columbus’ conquests in the “New World”. This portion of the exhibition had been shown in Brussels in February 2020 for one week, just before the start of the covid-19 pandemic, and so Luxembourg marks the first time it is being shown in its full capacity. 

Fujiwara recalls his first reaction upon discovering he had contracted syphilis: he burst out laughing. This then turned to shame, as he realised that with modern medicine it can heal quickly, but that hadn’t been the case over thousands of years. The STD, the symptoms of which include red blotches and feverish dreams, was also linked to a number of artists, like Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, thereby connecting Fujiwara to a creative legacy, what he could transform into a sort of “badge of honour”. Three ships are the focal point of this space, reminders of colonisation but also uniquely serving as contemplations on health, illness, sexuality. “The work is a visualisation of processing all that noise, like the ships, full of different aesthetic references, of things I see that disturb me,” Fujiwara adds. “I’m using this noise of the world as a kind of toolbox. It’s a Pandora’s box, but it’s a toolbox for me.”

Simon Fujiwara: A Whole New World, 20.03 — 23.08.2026, Mudam Luxembourg, www.mudam.com 

Photos: Vues d’exposition Simon Fujiwara: A Whole New World, 20.03 — 23.08.2026, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean | Courtesy de l’artiste; Gió Marconi, Milano; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Dvir Gallery Paris, Tel Aviv, Brussels and Esther Schipper Berlin/Paris/Seoul | Photo : Andrea Rossetti © Mudam Luxembourg