The use of clothing enables artists to create complex narratives and build discourses on power, dependence, gender roles, heritage or personal identity. ‘Coming Out of the Closet: Clothing Art as an Emergent Form’ (5th November, 2011- 26th February, 2012) is a new exhibition held at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida, that exhibits sixteen visual artists, thirteen of which are women. 

For Dr. Viki D. Thompson Wylder, Curator of the exhibition and Fine Arts Specialist at the MoFa (Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts), “Clothing art as a form references the figure while bypassing it. No clothing art can be viewed without thinking about the human physicality in some way. Yet the body is removed from the viewer’s inspection.” 

Indeed, Linda Hall’s dresses and shoes resemble empty chrysalides made of papery ‘wrinkled skin’ and sprinkled with hairs, nipples or umbilical chords, expressing the bonds between the human and animal worlds, as well as female metamorphosis through time. 

While, in her ‘Thin Dresses’ series, Priscilla Roggenkamp explores the conflicting relationship between women and their distorted body image, the vicious cycle of anorexia and bulimia, the ugly habit of self-depreciation and obsessive comparison to the other, the ideal.

Lydia Nelson Friedland’s dress named ‘A Woman’s Prerogative’ is a sculpture made of staples, machine hardware, aluminium and sewing notions with several pairs of open scissors attached. Perhaps the dress acts as a metaphor for the millions of invisible and painful little cuts, cracks, compromises and frustrations that build up and poison the inner self. 

Nancy Youdelman uses found objects that she finds on eBay to build her costume-inspired sculptures. Her children’s dresses are solid bronze structures that ‘trap’ memories as they are skillfully inlaid with old black and white family portraits, buttons, letters and forgotten tiny bits and pieces that could be found in a mother’s precious chest. 

Donna Rosenthal’s raw materials include vintage comic books, vintage romance novels and old music sheets, that she transforms into ‘fancy’ paper dresses, humorously addressing the fussy little faults of feminine existence: a secret window of fantasy in an otherwise super-organized and efficient daily life. The right, after all, to indulge in doll collections and miniatures, to read a gossip magazine now and then, to sing a silly song in private, or read a schmaltzy novel during a vacation.

 In her Consumermania series, Anne Timpano humorously recycles Botticelli’s famous Venus, the archetype of passive feminine beauty, and dresses her in various contemporary outfits with logos and slogans found in everyday advertising. Thus, typical female stereotypes become paper dolls: ‘Reba Recycle’ (eco-fashionista), ‘Fiona Fashion’ (shopaholic), or ‘Wanda Wall Street’ (business executive).

In contrast, in their work ‘Man’s Best Friend’ (2011), Guerra de la Paz use clothing to express power and domination in the contemporary business world and society. While the snake tie represents faceless corporations, the dog-man symbolizes the general population, with a noose around its neck. Both figures are dressed in black from head to toe, as if in mourning and the dog-man’s S&M mask has closures to block vision as he is led into darkness and uncertainty.

When asked about the fine line between clothing as an art form vs. art-inspired, couture, or controversial fashion, Dr. Wylder explains: “Clothing art often acts as a substitute for the body and is meant to carry conceptual or intellectual messages about who we are and what we think and do as people. There is of course an overlap between clothing art and fashion, but the underlying function of fashion seems meant to adorn the body even if it carries additional messages. However, clothing art would not exist without fashion and its history.”  

Louise Kissa

lkissa@neurope.eu