With the freedom of online shopping, you can now have exactly what you want, delivered to your doorstep — sometimes even on the same day. But discounted prices and unprecedented convenience come at a great cost, and we must no longer turn a blind eye to these hidden consequences.

Take Amazon as an example. It is notorious for its deplorable working conditions and unfair wages for its warehouse employees, ongoing lawsuits, tax evasion, and the cumulative effect that their shipping model has on our environment is catastrophic. Yet, it has soared into a new level of market dominance since the onset of the global pandemic. Amazon now has a market cap over $1.9 trillion. Its CEO Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest humans on the planet, has a net worth over $204 billion. This level of wealth hoarding is dangerous and unsustainable.

With a nod to Andy Warhol’s iconic Brillo boxes, these stacked screen-printed boxes use humour to draw attention to the multinational mega-corporations crushing small businesses. “By using the replicas of those cartons, Warhol brought the audience’s attention not to the goods that were in the box but to the box itself. These carefully manufactured and immaculately finished cartons allude to the powerful yet invisible force behind the production and marketing of the products themselves. They are symbols of the complicated network of demand and supply essential to the formation of a consumerist culture.” (MoMA)

Corporations like Amazon rely on complacency. It may feel hopeless, but your purchasing choices have power. Like a single voice in a protest, or an individual ballot in an election, your actions contribute to direct, cumulative change. This installation is a friendly — and urgent — reminder to support local business, even if it costs a few more cents than Amazon.