This work reimagines Rembrandt’s The Ascension of Christ (1636, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), a devotional painting originally commissioned as part of a cycle of Passion scenes. In Rembrandt’s version, Christ rises into divine light, surrounded by angels, while the apostles gaze upward in awe – a composition steeped in reverence, transcendence, and salvation.

In my version, Christ is supplanted by a female mannequin: a contemporary symbol of commerce, the commodified form, and the empty shell through which consumer desire is projected. Elevated in Rembrandt’s shaft of light, the mannequin becomes an idol without spirit – a product raised to the status of deity.

The composition is further transformed by vast, cathedral-like SALE banners, which dominate the scene and bathe it in commercial red. The divine glow of ascension becomes the theatrical spotlight of retail display. The scene could now be from within a department store or a luxury boutique or a catwalk. The apostles and cherubs, once witnesses to the sacred, are re-cast as consumers absorbed into the spectacle of a new season’s style.

The Ascension of Commerce exposes how commerce functions as a new form of worship: demanding reverence while hollowing out meaning. The work also comments on how nothing remains sacred in image culture – historical artworks, like religious rituals, are absorbed into cycles of reproduction, circulation, and consumption. What was once holy has been entirely consumed by commerce