A national identity? in this economy? On the eve of his first large scale exhibition at Spazio Maiocchi in collaboration with Slam Jam, NR spoke with British artist Corbin Shaw (b. 1998) of new and old monuments, and taking, conceptually, the piss, diving deep in the global-local dichotomy and the meaning of nostalgia and complexity in the economy of a gen Z artist seeking sustainable form of expression. A conversation on Shaw’s practice framed through his new body of work developed exclusively for Eurotrash, an exploration of identity and contemporary stigmas, with the occasional detour on Mod’s “live clean in difficult circumstances” motto and a touch of Baudrillard mixed with Simon Reynolds subcultural commentary —best served cold at an airport.

You mentioned that you’ve never worked in a place quite like this. How does it feel?

It’s surreal, honestly. I’ve never really been in a position like this before, where I feel trusted to take on something so significant. But yeah, I’m excited about it. It’s this strange experience to go from just sitting, sketching ideas, to suddenly seeing them materialize. To see my name on the window outside—it feels almost unbelievable when I think back to just four years at university, working alone as an artist. Things have evolved so quickly, from working in my bedroom, to having a studio, to shows, and now to something this large. It’s kind of a dream.

Is this your first exhibition of this size?

Yes, it is.The groundwork for this show started with another project back in April, which marked a big step in my practice. People from London started noticing it and sharing it. But yes, this is the largest thing I’ve done. It’s crazy. One minute you are a student at university, the next one you’re here. I’m really curious about how an Italian audience would react to my work. In Britain, there’s a certain cultural understanding, a legacy, around the themes I explore, but I wonder how that translates here. I’m also constantly trying to explore my identity as British, yet not cling to it too nostalgically. The works reflect modern Britain, not an idealized past, so I’m interested to hear how Italian viewers might respond to this contemporary vision. Growing up, I was surrounded by the clash between old and new. It’s like this constant layering of history. In London, for example, you see these guys on bikes, fully armored up, like modern-day knights riding electric-powered bikes instead of horses. It’s this strange mix of the past and the present, like jousting in the streets, but with a tech twist. Living in a city like London, it feels like you’re always immersed in it. You walk down a street and see a plaque that says, “This person lived here” or “Karl Marx wrote here,” and you’re reminded of the history all around you. It’s mental, really. You’re not just walking through space, you’re walking through time, learning about it, experiencing it, and being a part of it all. There’s this sense of living within layers of history. I’m fascinated by that.

How do these themes of history and identity find their way into your work?

When I moved to London, a lot of my work was focused on my hometown and the city I grew up in. I lived in a way that made it feel like my life had ended—everything was about the past, about my childhood. I was mourning that phase a bit, while also trying to move on. I was growing into adulthood and starting to consider myself a distinct person in the world, trying to figure out my place as an artist. But eventually, I realized I wasn’t paying attention to what was around me, to the contemporary culture. When I left university, I was really eager to learn more. At school, I was always more academic. I knew I was creative, but I never felt great in the academic setting. When I studied in London, I often felt like I was falling behind. So, when I graduated, I was determined to learn about the deeper things that fascinated me. I was drawn to places in London—whether they were galleries, museums, or institutions—that had a rich cultural history. Being in a city that has so many cultural sources, shaped by its colonial past, was a privilege. It’s similar to when I was in Athens and visited the Parthenon. That experience was huge for me. Of course, half of it is in the British Museum, and I was just so fascinated by that.

So, you’ve shifted from nostalgia to something more current, right?

Yes, absolutely. I grew up in a post-industrial suburb, a place surrounded by new developments and shopping centers, where my comfort was in these plastic, suburban spaces. Now, whenever I go back, I notice even more the rapid transformation—everything seems modeled after American culture. But I’m drawn to these “modern monuments,” and I’m trying to express that they are as valuable to me as a historic landmark might be. For example, the urinal in the square references Trafalgar Square fountain, but also the one outside Buckingham Palace and the one at Fauci Square. Each of these has become a space where, every time a football match is on, the fans gather. In football, especially, the celebration gets a bit wild—men often celebrate the game by being naked in the fountain. There’s something about that, almost biblical in a way, that makes me think about how people overlook the significance of these rituals in modern contexts. It’s like history repeating itself over and over again, in a different form. I’ve become increasingly interested in architecture, particularly in the last year or two, and how the materials used in buildings influence our perception of them. What does concrete say in comparison to limestone? What’s the history of limestone? How does the color of concrete, or something like plastic, influence our understanding of a place? In the UK, a lot of new buildings, even in the city, are made to look old. It’s as if there’s a desire to preserve history, but in a way that feels almost like a post-postmodern approach. We’ve had modernism, then postmodernism, and now this hybrid where every detail is meticulously recreated. I think in Britain, there’s a struggle with identity, especially with the impact of globalization and capitalism.

It’s funny you mention that, because one of the things I jotted down in my notes was exactly this apparent clash between the rampaging globalization happening right now and the closing of borders, which is especially evident on the political level—like with Brexit and, just a couple of days ago, Trump being reelected. It’s a bit unsettling, to say the least. But then, on the cultural and arts level, we see this amazing (though not always in a positive sense) amalgamation of everything. It’s as if everything is starting to feel the same. You can see it and feel it in cities, in the way things are constructed, but also in food, in people’s behavior, and in how they react to art. I think this ties into what you mentioned earlier about being curious to see how people will react and interact with your work here. What do you think about this? Do you consciously think about it when you’re working, or is it something that’s so ingrained in people of our age and generation that we just absorb this contradiction and live with it?

I think, for me, I realized that nostalgia had crept into my work so much that it started to feel like I was looking backward, not appreciating what was around me. I grew up in a suburban area in Sheffield, in the north of England, in a post-industrial village where much of the industry had been lost. I lived on a new-build estate, and my comfort was found in shopping centers, retail parks—new spaces that, in a way, reflected America. Every time I go home now, I notice how rapidly it’s all changing. Everyone drives around with huge Stanley Cups, buys doughnuts, grabs coffee, and goes to the movies—it’s surreal. But is that a bad thing? Can you actually love these things? I think you can, and that’s what I’m trying to explore with my work. I’m trying to find a balance, a kind of level ground, where something like a McDonald’s toy holds as much emotional significance for me as a historic monument or flag. I feel emotionally attached to it, so why not value it as a cultural object? In England, the class system is so deeply embedded that what’s considered valuable or not is tied to hierarchy. It’s a classic thing that runs through everything. But there’s something sad about it in Britain—especially in fashion—where working-class culture gets fetishized. It’s appropriated by middle- and upper-class people, and then, all of a sudden, it’s seen as valuable when before, it wasn’t.I’m really interested in that tension between the high and the low. Words like “kitsch” are so loaded.. It’s aggressive, almost. I try to work around this question: What does it mean to take objects that are deemed “unimportant” or “alien” and reframe them as valuable in a gallery setting? For example, in my work, I’ve taken an inflatable plastic sword, something that would usually deflate or fade, and I’ve cast it in stone. I like the idea of freezing time—preserving something that would typically be temporary, turning it into something that lasts, just like plastic itself does.

That’s fascinating—taking something “disposable” and making it timeless. It makes me think of monuments. Historically, they were grand symbols of a culture’s values, but today’s equivalents are different, like you said. They might be something as mundane as an iPhone or a McDonald’s toy. 

Yes, exactly. It’s about finding meaning in the “everyday monuments” of my time, which might be shop signs or commercial objects. I love Baudrillard’s idea that everything in our society has become a simulation—meaning is fluid, almost arbitrary, yet we find ourselves living in this “nightmare” where we can’t help but participate.

This reminds me of a larger conversation about culture in an era of globalization. Everything is blending, borders are dissolving, yet there’s a resurgence of nationalism. Do you find this paradox influencing your work?

Absolutely, it’s like we’re witnessing the collapse of any singular cultural identity. I think that’s what I’m questioning: What is British culture now? Is it the historic landmarks, or is it the commercial plasticity of modern life? As artists, we’re kind of forced to reckon with this fragmentation. It’s exhausting because things change so quickly, yet there’s a deep sense of nostalgia for what’s been lost, even if we didn’t live through it

This is a discussion I’ve been having with a lot of the people I work with. I think this is the most contemporary predicament we’re facing right now. Is a predominant culture even possible anymore? And if so, what would that mean today? In a way, this relates to the fact that there are no longer clear borders, but politically, the new right is trying to reintroduce them. I think it comes from a shared fear—the fear of dispersion, of complete fragmentation—and we all internalize it and express it differently. You as an artist might channel it in your work, while I try to write about it. But at its core, it’s the same fear: the fear of not being able to keep up, or even worse, not knowing what we’re trying to keep up with.

I think it’s strange. I feel like capitalism has hijacked creativity in a way that distorts what I believe creativity was originally meant to do. For me, art and artistry were about connecting with others—expressing myself through writing or physical objects is just a way of trying to relate to someone, or to describe a feeling, a setting, or anything happening in our lives. But now, everything is moving at such a fast pace that so much gets lost. We don’t spend enough time with what’s being presented to us. You could even say that about this exhibition—it’s only up for a few days, maybe four or five. In my head, it seems crazy. I can’t believe how much time and effort go into something so grand that ends so quickly. We live in an era of the “moment.” Everyone wants to be at the event when it’s happening, to get that photo and say, “I was there.” And it’s exhausting. Honestly, it makes me want to lock myself away in a house by the seaside, be completely alone, because I think that’s important for an artist. But at the same time, I want to be immersed in the culture, react to it, experience it all. It’s such a tough balance. You can’t do everything, right? It’s hard. I think this is the experience we’re all living now, especially as creatives trying to make work—it’s incredibly complicated. I don’t think anyone before us could have really understood it.

The levels of complexity are definitely different now. It’s also about the continuous pace of change and the sheer amount of information we now have access to. 

I don’t work in one specific way, and I actually find it almost backwards when I think about artists who limit themselves to one medium. I don’t know if that sounds like a bad thing, but I can’t see myself creating work in just one form. We have access to so many tools and opportunities—why couldn’t I be a weaver, an embroiderer, a sculptor, a video artist, a performer, all of it? I think a lot of young creatives in London feel the need to work in just one way because they believe that’s how they’ll sell. But I don’t feel that pressure. I love being an artist because I approach my work as a question or an exploration, and I’m always trying to find the right medium to best fit the concept or the idea.

The word “brief” itself says a lot about how we’ve become accustomed to balancing the art world with the commercial side. I think the most effective way to work within this framework is to make those two coexist. With younger artists, like those of our generation, there’s a growing awareness of how capitalism, or whatever system is in place, has infiltrated art—something that was once meant to be its antithesis. More and more, artists are internalizing that contradiction and starting to work with it, exploring how to express themselves within that tension.

At the end of the day, people need to make money to pay bills, rent, all of that. But I think the bigger issue is that it’s stifling creativity. So many interesting ideas are out there, but they’re just not being funded. Big companies, or filmmakers and funding bodies, would rather back the same formulas over and over again. They’d rather fund another blockbuster movie than take a risk on something new and experimental. There’s this fear, and I think fear is what’s strangling a lot of creativity right now.

Do you think new pockets of resistance are emerging in response to this?

Absolutely, there are always new pockets of resistance. I don’t think that creativity is dead or that interesting things aren’t happening—I know people who are doing amazing work. But I do feel like there’s a big difference between now and, say, the 90s. Back then, people just went for it. We did what we wanted, how we wanted, without worrying about how long we could keep it up. It was more spontaneous. Now, when I talk to people from that time, it feels like it’s not like that anymore. Everything has become more commercialized, and the spirit of creative freedom feels restricted.

Do you ever get frustrated by that?

Sometimes, yeah. I know it sounds a bit like a tantrum, but I think it’s justified. I just wish past generations understood that things aren’t the same anymore. I know they faced their own challenges, but it’s different now. It’s harder, really hard. But at the same time, great things are still happening. People are resilient, and there’s still faith in the creative process. I just wish more opportunities were available to more people.

It’s a big issue—sustainability in culture and expression. How do you see that changing? What do you think about new models for supporting culture and creativity?

Yeah, that’s a huge topic. It’s not just about environmental sustainability but also about creating a sustainable model for culture and artistic expression. We need new ways of supporting the creative community, and I think institutions need to start thinking outside the traditional structures. There are places like Sponsor Mayock, which operate at these intersections between art, commerce, and culture. They take money from one pocket and use it to support new platforms and give people a space to be heard. That’s what more people should be doing—providing space, providing opportunities.

Speaking of space, I’m really intrigued by the sound section of your show. Could you tell me more about that?

Sure! James Massiah is a poet, rapper, and musician. I first came across his work through the Baby Father album, which captured such a specific, vivid snapshot of life in London at that time. After hearing that, I dug deeper into his spoken word, and I ended up spending some time with him—though not personally, I followed his events in London and watched a lot of his talks and podcasts. I’ve always been drawn to artists, especially men, who manage to balance hyper-masculinity with vulnerability. They express themselves in ways that feel so raw and authentic, especially considering the environments they come from. When I heard James’s words, it really painted a picture of the London experience—of love, loss, and everything in between. I thought it would be interesting to showcase two different perspectives on life there, especially with the contrast between my background as a white northerner and his as a Black man from London. There’s an intriguing interplay in how our experiences overlap, and I think that contrast makes for a compelling conversation about identity and experience. I just really admire his work, and I felt it would be an interesting addition to the show.

Circling back to the questions about a different audience, would you think say an italian audience might get the same contrast? Or perhaps not? Are you also interested in the possibility that this contrast might fly over their head? 

Well, I chose to make work referencing an airport, which is such a sterile, liminal space—almost without any fixed identity. It’s hard to pin down to any one country. But, of course, there are elements in airports, like signs or symbols, that make it clear you’re in a specific place. I like that idea—there are subtle elements of me in there, but mostly, the space is so clean, almost like a white cube, that the addition of James’s words would really paint a different picture. His words would recontextualize everything in a new way, almost creating a suspension of the usual narrative. His work could shift the whole atmosphere in the space.

Exactly, it would create a new kind of suspension in the moment. Maybe his words, when played, would generate something different, a kind of re-contextualization happening in real time.

Yeah, definitely. And reconnecting to what you said about being so obsessed with the moment—being at an opening, being in that experience—it makes me think about how we engage with shows. There’s this element of site specificity that’s inherent in the medium itself, and how we experience things in museums. You go for the experience of the opening, and that specific moment—something that can only happen there, and then.

Right, it’s almost like the temporality of the show itself, being here for just a few days, really makes you reflect on how events like this are tied to a specific site and time. It’s a fleeting experience.

Yes, exactly. That temporality is key to the experience—it adds another layer of meaning. I think there’s something really interesting in that. i like the idea of doing something as grand as this outside of London. A lot of the time, I look at New York and think, everything’s happening there, and I wish I were there. I think the same probably happens in London—people look at the city and say, great things are happening here. But for me, I like the idea of moving my work outside of London, even outside the UK altogether. There’s something intriguing about stepping away from those established centers of culture. I’m just curious about how people react to it. I want to know how people from outside view it. Like, if an Italian were to look at a British person, how do they see that? It’s interesting how we boil down cultures into symbols—through history, football teams, political leaders, and so on. You know, Italians have their own stereotypes, and so do the British. It’s fascinating how these perceptions play out across different cultures.

Well, Britain has had a rich subcultural history, especially in London. My father, for example, was a modernist—he collected things related to that movement. He would always tell me that being a mod is more about an attitude than an aesthetic. He was big into Northern Soul and the Manchester club scene, so I grew up with that influence.

That’s really similar to me, actually. My father also had that mod influence, with skinhead culture and fashion. Britain was really defined by things like mod culture, skinhead culture, and even ska, fashion-wise, but also as a reflection of the working-class attitude—living clean under difficult circumstances. It was a real expression of resilience.

Yeah, exactly. That’s why Simon Reynolds’ essay on Mods really resonates with me. His exploration of how kids would save up for certain clothes, dress up—they were making a statement. It’s essentially where streetwear culture was born, just from a conceptual standpoint. This idea of attaching pride to what you wear, even when it means making sacrifices elsewhere—like, do you eat or do you dress? And they chose to dress. It was that important.

Exactly. It’s fascinating how that culture was built on wanting to be part of high culture, but doing it on a shoestring budget. Look at the mods in post-war Britain—they were watching the Italians, drinking cappuccinos, riding Vespas, listening to jazz from America and France. All of that was aspirational for the working class in Britain. They wanted to be part of that “cool” European vibe but in their own, more affordable way. They were looking at European and American culture and trying to recreate it with what they had, making it their own. What’s overlooked in the UK now, I think, is how deeply that ethos still lives on, in some form. That’s the beauty of culture, isn’t it? Things don’t belong to anyone, really. When something becomes a pure symbol—like the Vespa—it doesn’t matter where it came from anymore. It’s a symbol that represents something else entirely. It becomes something significant in its own right, without needing its original signifier. That’s where it gets interesting. Yes, there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of loss of meaning, but there’s also a lot of freedom in that.

That’s why you’re wearing a MoMA hoodie, right?

Absolutely. Even though me wearing a MoMa hoodie comes from a completely different place, if you’d like, culturally.

It says a lot about the state of things today. I think it’s time to rethink what culture even means now. I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between art, aesthetics, and politics, and whether there’s still a meaningful connection between them. Can art even be political today? That’s a tough question, one that’s kind of provocative. But, when you look around—especially with figures like Donald Trump or Berlusconi—it’s hard to make sense of it all. When politics feels so absurd, everything kind of seems to make sense at the same time.

It’s true. We live in a time where deep fakes and AI are making it harder to tell what’s true and what isn’t. It’s all very confusing. But somehow, we just carry on, don’t we?

Yeah, it’s a strange existence. And it reminds me of the Form Follows Fiction show at Castello di Rivoli in the early 2000s. 20+ years later, it feels like life is more and more similar to being in a movie sometimes—like when you look around, you feel like you’re playing a part. And that, oddly, becomes your reality.

Exactly. And we were kind of getting into this when talking about my show, but we got sidetracked a bit. The fountain concept in my work, though—it’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve always wanted to use a fountain because it’s such a sharp reference to art history, but I also wanted to play with that in a more subversive way. In a city like Milan, you have these beautiful, crafted fountains, right? But in places like Soho in London, you get these grotesque, plastic public urinals where people piss. I thought it would be interesting to transform something so raw, so hyper-masculine, into something beautiful and reflective—turn it into an art object. And I wanted to play with the idea of it “pissing backwards,” which felt pretty nice.

Is the fountain, conceptually, “taking the piss?”

Yes, exactly. But it’s more than that. There’s something about the space a fountain occupies in a city. At night, when you walk by one of those public urinals, it’s like the atmosphere shifts. Soho transforms from a daytime café and bar culture into a nighttime, more aggressive drinking culture. And as a woman, you’d probably feel some fear walking through that, right? But what I wanted to do was take this hyper-masculine, charged object—this four-way urinal—and turn it into a soft, inviting space. Something where people could reflect, sit, maybe throw a coin in, and make a wish.

That’s an interesting inversion of the object’s usual use.

Yeah, it’s about giving a sense of serenity back to a place that is typically more charged. In a way, it’s a nice contrast—a beautiful, calm fountain where you can wish for a better, more peaceful world. Even in all the bleakness, that’s the kind of hopeful gesture I want to end with. But then there’s also the billboard. The picture on it is from when I was driving down to Dover. Dover’s this big, white, chalky cliff area in the UK, and it’s where ferries to France or the Netherlands depart. What’s interesting about Dover is that when you’re there, your phone network changes to a French one. It’s like being so close to another country, but still so far. I’ve been working a lot with chalk recently, so I’ve been carving and playing with the white cliffs of Dover in my work. I took this picture driving down there, and it’s the first thing you’d see when you arrive by ferry into Britain. But it’s not exactly exciting—it’s actually quite bleak and boring. It’s real. And when you arrive, you see these road signs in different languages, like French and Spanish or maybe French and German, telling you what side of the road to drive on. It kind of looks like I’m driving on the wrong side, which I thought was interesting. I liked the idea that it could be a foreigner just arriving, confused about which side to drive on. It’s a simple but effective picture, and the font used on the signs also has a certain feel to it. It reminds me of a type used in Britain by organizations like the National Trust, which is responsible for preserving natural landmarks like the white cliffs of Dover. The National Trust protects these places from being built on or altered, allowing people to walk through and enjoy them as they are. In a way, it felt like an advertisement for Britain, especially with how some ads in Britain today try to promote domestic travel. They encourage people to leave London for the countryside, like Suffolk or the seaside, to escape the nine-to-five grind. It feels almost a bit surreal, but it’s true—people in London rarely leave London. There’s a disconnect between London and the rest of the country, just like the difference between cities here in Italy, like Milan and Naples or Rome.

Yeah, Milan is its own world, separate from the rest of Italy. It’s the same with London and the rest of Britain.

Exactly. There’s a huge divide between the North and the South of Britain, just like there is between the North and South of Italy. It’s a different reality in each region, and it’s something that’s really apparent when you travel outside the big cultural capitals. There’s this weird thing about regional pride, too. I was thinking about this when I was in New York this past August, working on ideas for this show. I came across a story about graffiti artists replacing white flags with star-spangled banners on the Brooklyn Bridge, and it got me thinking about the symbolism of white flags and surrender.

That’s really interesting. It’s almost like a stripping away of national identity.

Exactly. I thought about how, if the far right got their way in post-Brexit Britain and created a “white utopia,” they might try to erase all color—like bleaching everything white, almost as if to cleanse it. That’s what I liked about the idea of the white flag—it symbolizes surrender, but in a very daunting way. It felt like a metaphor for what was happening in Britain, especially with the way they want to hold onto the past, with all the imperial history and the constant pomp and circumstance. The actions don’t match the rhetoric.

Right, it’s like they want to hold onto this image of Britain that doesn’t exist anymore.

Yes, and the way things are now—the ceremonies, the national symbols like the poppy—have become detached from their original meanings. For example, the red poppy was meant to symbolize ceasefire and remembrance for fallen soldiers, but now it’s become more of a detached ritual. Last year, on Remembrance Day in London, people marched for the fallen in World War I and II, but there was also a Palestinian freedom march happening at the same time. There was conflict between the two groups, but both were essentially marching for the same thing—a desire for peace. Yet, it became this battle over meaning, and that’s where language, history, and symbolism get distorted.

So, the idea of the white flag in your work reflects that loss of meaning and identity?

Exactly. The flag, in its pure white simplicity, is a surrender—there’s a kind of haunting finality to it. But it’s also about the bleaching of something—removing all the color to create this sterile, empty ideal. It’s also about the way Britain tries to elevate itself by clinging to the past while ignoring the realities of the present. This all ties back to that idea of “peace, prosperity, and friendship” that was stamped on the commemorative coin made when Britain left the EU. It’s a joke because the reality is so far from that ideal.

It’s interesting how these symbols that once meant something have now become empty gestures.

Yes, and it’s like the ceremonies and parades continue as if nothing has changed. The poppy, for example, has become detached from its original meaning, much like the national identity itself. It’s a cycle of forgetting what something truly stood for and replacing it with a hollow version. We only start to realize the consequences of this once it escalates into something even larger, like a global conflict. History tends to repeat itself, but people often don’t recognize the patterns until it’s too late.