There is a lot of talk in fashion about merging male/female elements in the same garments and generally uniforming genders. The same discussion about genders, you could argue, has been going on in the art field for decades.
Hannah Höch tackled for example the nature of female identity in her collage "Dompteuse" (Tamer, dating from 1930, but reworked in the version we have around the 1960s).
The Tamer in this collage was represented as an androgynous figure, a human body with a porcelain mannequin head of a woman that meditatively looked at an anthropomorphic sea lion. There is a sort of struggle to achieve a balance of forces as the Tamer on a rich brown background surrounded by brass studs seems to dominate over the sea lion that, at the same time, has a strange and uncanny look. There are a lot of contradictions in this fascinating work that prompts the viewers to wonder who is the dominant figure in this representation of gender ambiguity.
Inspired by some key concepts in this artwork - the theme of the balancing act between dominating figures, the gender ambiguity in the dummy and the fact that the best collages contain cheap everyday objects - I came up with the following necklace.
The small articulated mannequin represents gender ambiguity, and the fact that one of its legs is getting out of the frame (the cord forming the necklace) hints at the balancing act between genders, but also between physical spaces. No sea lion? Well, I'll maybe keep it for another time and another necklace, this is, after all, a very quick Sunday project.
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