The photograph of Karina, the leader of K-pop group aespa and a Converse global ambassador, appeared as part of Converse’s global Chuck 70 X campaign in late August. It showed Karina in a voluminous white skirt, standing within Converse’s star-shaped light and holding a pair of black sneakers at her side. Weeks later, viewers began to read those elements through the visual history of racial violence: the triangular field of white and shadow as a Ku Klux Klan hood; the shoes hanging from an obscured hand as the feet of a hanging body.
