Genuine Fake

Genuine Fake Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

In Genuine Fake, authenticity becomes merchandise and identity turns into spectacle. The central figure is Mao Zedong, the historic leader of Chinese communism, now transformed into a curator of capitalist icons: he holds Mickey Mouse and Superman as trophies of a culture colonized by the market. It is a powerful visual irony: China, communist on the inside, capitalist on the outside.

Logos from Levi’s, Nike, iPhone, and AliExpress blend with dragons, stars, and phrases like “Made in China” and “Genuine Fake”, blurring the boundaries between the original and the manufactured. The piece is a critical carnival where power disguises itself as a brand, and the copy becomes more iconic than the original. It is a portrait of the contemporary simulacrum, where truth is mass‑produced and irony dresses itself in pop.