Mexican artist Elina Chauvet has accused Romanian news anchor Alessandra Stoicescu of plagiarizing her famous installation, "Zapatos Rojos" (Red Shoes). The dispute arose after Stoicescu organized a public intervention titled "Dragostea poartă pantofii roșii" outside the Romanian Athenaeum to mark new femicide legislation, featuring hundreds of red shoes in a manner nearly identical to Chauvet’s long-running global project. Chauvet claims this is the second time Stoicescu has co-opted her work without authorization or credit, following a similar incident in 2018.
This case highlights the complex legal and ethical boundaries of social practice art and the protection of conceptual motifs. While "Zapatos Rojos" has become a global symbol for victims of gender-based violence, Chauvet maintains that the work is a copyrighted collaborative process that requires her specific guidelines and authorship to be respected. The controversy underscores the tension between an artwork becoming a universal protest symbol and the artist's right to control their intellectual property and creative legacy.