‘Silk Evening Gown; the search for uniqueness in a world of predefines’
My initial poster explored how judgement of a stranger’s personality is solely based on the aesthetic political story created by the individual. This political story being their fashion and stylistic attributes, for instance the colours and brands in which they presented themselves in. This story becomes problematic as we read somebody not by their personal identity, but by the material consumer choices they make, and ultimately as Jean Baudrillard writes; the “hyperreality” or associated stereotypical signs and symbols of such consumables. As a result, unfortunately in a way, we ourselves are consumed by our consumables.
Realising this cultural social situation sparked me to question why individuals don’t make their own clothes; their own unique social identities. Thus, I have hand-crocheted a garment, titled ‘Silk Evening Gown’. By refusing the use of machine, a symbol of mass culture, to construct my garment this surely would exile my image from the social system of predefined politics? My work argues that this is not the case.
Silk Evening Gown addresses that our globalised culture does not exist in a vacuum, making it near impossible to aesthetically position the self as unique and independent. A designer or artist who creatively invents their own image is still bound by the materials in which they constructed their prospective garments or artworks in. As conveyed in Damian Ortega’s work; Cosmic Thing, our consumables too have an inherent hyperreality linked with the history of their production. For instance, cultural appreciation may be considered in the case of our llama wool scarf spun by the Peruvian woman of the Chincheros village. Yet, our society actively neglects the uncredited workers of fabric factories who slave to produce our designer jeans. I believe these factory workers should be equally valued for their efforts and that every consumable has an often overlooked inherent story, and in participating in our aesthetic-based mass-culture existence of ignorance, we somewhat become removed from our humanity.
I have taken technical inspiration from Rosalie Gascoigne’s artmaking practice and Ivano Vitali’s knitted newspaper yarn art that both embrace alien methods and the creation of value and beauty from worthless materials. Thus, to convey consumer culture’s ignorance, my crocheted garment refused the stale and conventional wool material in which crochet is traditionally practiced. Instead, in my work, over 50 different plastic bags have been experimentally cut and woven together to create the yarn for Silk Evening Gown. That is over 50 united different stories, some of which were directly once told. For instance one bag read “I am made with recycled plastic bags…” and others had various branding printed for example “Coles”. These once recognised stories now have been deliberately abstracted into a single strand. This repurposed, now unidentifiable plastic strand evokes our lost awareness for the forgotten wider cultural frame in which we live in as we simply become self-focused and out of touch. A fragmentation similarly reflected in Felix Gonzales-Torres’ Untitled (Perfect Lovers), where two once in synch clocks grow seconds and slowly overtime minutes apart. In the creation of my yarn I was also inspired by Yanagi Yukinori’s The World Flag Ant Farm series which suggests that our distinctively unique cultures are slowly melding into one unidentifiable mass.
The holey nature of Silk Evening Gown intends to make the wearer feel exposed, discomforted and insecure. Much alike how I personally feel when judged daily on my aesthetic political story. For instance; my choice to dress in unfashionable, pyjama-like, comfortable clothes to university, or contrastingly, something branded, tight-fitted and supportive to exercise in surely doesn’t make me a slob or try-hard gym goer. My daily social experience proves that through self-comfort emerges a sense of alienation much alike in Mona Hatoum’s installation; Interior Landscape, which experiments with this idea of discomfort. It is almost impossible to escape this victimisation, yet we all retain our active roles in society as the inflictors of judgment. Thus, the almost unfinished, holey aesthetic of my work also evokes the incomplete and fragmented nature of aesthetics in judging a person for their individual identities.
The deceptively ironic title of my work and its actual material reality produces an oxymoron that encapsulates my response to question 5. That is, that society has evolved to become so fascinated with consumption, that we have become hypnotised by our consumables’ hyperrealities. So much so that our judgement is often blinded and misled to create an armour of mythical stereotypes which only push humanity further apart. Additionally, the artificial net-like form of the garment traps the wearer, denoting an inability to escape this pre-defined mass cultural system. If plastic bags are representative remnants of mass culture’s desire to consume, my piece alludes that humanity has been consumed by consumption.
Mia Sabel, 13.09.14
