Slave to the Hashtag. On Juan Luis Pérez’s #socialmediaslave II

By Piter Ortega Núñez

In the blinding noise of an art fair—white booths, spotlights, competing stimuli—there stands a figure that looks at no one. It cannot: where a face should be, a black screen crowned with a hashtag and a golden obscene gesture replaces the human gaze. This is not merely a sculpture; it is a switched-on mirror.

#socialmediaslave II, by Cuban artist Juan Luis Pérez, has just received the Best Sculpture Award 2025 at Red Dot Miami, during Art Basel Week. Selected among hundreds of sculptural works, it stands out for naming our era with surgical precision: an age addicted to images and starved for validation, false personification, well-crafted, choreographic, embellished and at times fictitious lives. The work will next appear at Art Palm Beach (January 28 – February 1, 2026), confronting new audiences along its path.

The central figure is a slender black mannequin wearing a jacket printed with dollar bills, depicting the social media influencer’s focus on wealth and status. From the waist down, the body extends into black sculptural legs, synthetic and anonymous. On its feet, golden boots stand on a small patch of artificial grass covered with dollar bills, further emphasizing the need to portray a lavish lifestyle. Beside it, the dog stands alert on the carpet of money, a silent witness to the spectacle. The leash, intentionally shown pulled taut with no slack, demonstrates that the dog is being dragged, not walked—an apparent sign of the figure’s lack of presence in the current situation and its surroundings.

From the back emerges a fan of arrows piercing the torso with the precision of contemporary martyrdom. One of them, visible on the front of the figure, pierces a small heart-emoji placed on the chest. It suggests not only that digital affection—the symbolic “heart” of social media—can become a wound, but above all how much psychological and emotional damage can come from these platforms. It speaks of backstabbing and temptation, and of how social media can serve as a sinner’s stage, no matter how good your intentions are, constantly feeding cycles of instant gratification.

Other arrows bear inscriptions referring to the various groups that surround us online: followers, critics, relatives, strangers. Whether they adore, envy, or resent us, everyone shoots. Like a twenty-first-century Saint Sebastian, the figure suffers not for faith, but for visibility. This same visibility opens the figure to circumstances in which it is judged, critiqued and, at times, even ridiculed.

The title #socialmediaslave states the condition plainly: this is no “user” but a slave. That condition becomes literal in the metal chain that begins at the neck and runs down toward the hands, as if the very throat—the voice, the ability to speak—were bound to the device it holds. The chain does not merely restrain the body; it subdues identity and expression, physically linking the figure to the act of taking the selfie. The device functions at once as shackle and prosthetic, capturing the image at the precise moment of sacrifice.

The absence of a face is perhaps the most unsettling gesture. Where flesh and gaze should be, a square screen crowns the body like a totem. The hashtag becomes a new halo—not sacred, but algorithmic. The golden hand lifted in profanity may signal cynicism, rebellion, or the system’s own silent verdict: I own you.

The body wears money as if capital were a second skin, yet this armor protects nothing. The arrows penetrate effortlessly, reminding us that monetization does not shield anyone from hatred, burnout, or scrutiny.

Symbolically, the dog is crucial. Standing atop the bills yet indifferent to them, it represents that aspirational lifestyle so often displayed as achievement, now shown stripped of meaning—a witness untouched by the spectacle.

Formally, the installation is a frozen livestream: a three-dimensional screenshot. The figure’s leaning gesture creates a diagonal that mirrors the scrolling gesture of our own hands.

In his statement, the artist describes a world where perception replaces reality, where we no longer record memories but manufacture versions of ourselves. #socialmediaslave II embodies that diagnosis. We do not see a human being—we see an avatar, a monetized shell, wounds converted into content. As Pérez writes, we scroll, we tap, we react… but do we actually see? What we call connection often pulls us further away from our own humanity.

And it is the arrow piercing the heart-emoji that crystallizes this emotional rupture: the deepest wound is not physical but symbolic—the heart reduced to an icon, wounded in the very terrain where it seeks validation.

This is why Pérez’s work is more than criticism: it is an uncomfortable collective self-portrait. A warning. A mirror that asks how many arrows our own digital hearts can endure.

It is very apparent why Juan Luis Pérez was awarded the Best Sculpture Award. Not only was #socialmediaslave II one of the most memorable pieces in the fair, but it forces the viewer to walk away from the booth wondering whether they themselves have become a social media slave and, if so, what can be done. They are left thinking: How guilty am I of the same? Can one truly change these habits? Is it too late to change these habits? The work leaves these questions in the subconscious, with the artist’s hopes for social change—or, at the very least, social awareness.