Jeff Koons Creates Sculpture With Birkin Bags For Project Perpetual

Paris-based art collector and philanthropist Svetlana Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya founded the initiative Project Perpetual with the belief that creativity can motivate new ways of giving. “It’s the only power that’s capable of change,” said Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya.

Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya approached the United Nations Foundation to ask which cause needed the most help. Their answer was Shot@Life, an organization with partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, American Academy of Pediatrics, ADRA and the American Red Cross that gives children basic vaccinations against diseases like measles, mumps, polio and rubella. While Ebola may be at the top of everyone’s one mind at the moment, these vaccine-preventable diseases kill at least 1.5 million children each year.

For Project Perpetual’s inaugural project, Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya called on her most influential connections  — Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, Reem Beljafla, Sofia Coppola, Countess Daniela Memmo D’Amelio, HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover, designer Marc Jacobs, Marie-Josée Kravis, Clara Kuo, Almine Ruiz-Picasso and Diane von Furstenberg — to raise funds and facilitate advocacy by becoming a part of Project Perpetual and parting with a bag that they were close to so that artist Jeff Koons could reimagine it.

Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya contributed an Hermès Birkin bag given to her by her husband, Alfa Group founding partner Alexey Kuzmichev. “I was just questioning myself about why something could become a symbol,” said Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya.

Project Perpetual’s efforts will culminate in an auction on November 9 at the Four Seasons Restaurant. Up for bid will be bags customized by Koons as well as a new life-sized piece by Jeff Koons that’s part of his Gazing Ball series, a sculpture titled Gazing Ball (Charity), inspired by the Pablo Picasso painting that depicts a mother giving her child a bowl of soup titled La Soupe. For the Project Perpetual Gazing Ball sculpture, Koons reimagined the painting, adding the bags of HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover, Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya, and Kuo to the mother’s arm. “He is a father of many children and he was very sensitive to this vaccination issue,” said Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya. Other sculptures from Koons’s Gazing Ball series have sold for $2 million to $2.5 million.

Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya says there are two goals behind this project — to demonstrate the importance and power of creativity, and to get members of the art world to spread the word about the importance of vaccination. “It is this important tool that has saved more lives than any other medication in the history of humankind, and we have to remember that,” said Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya. “Only this year India has eradicated polio,” she added, before mentioning that diseases that were once under control are experiencing a resurgence, like an increased number of cases of measles in the United States and United Kingdom, because of the mindset that vaccinations are no longer important.

For more information, visit projectperpetual.org.