In yesterday's post we looked at the possibility of exploring the art and fashion connection with a moment captured at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice (May 11th to November 24th, 2019).
On the first floor of the Central Pavilion at the Giardini there is instead the chance to explore a series of themes, including recycled fashion, via a clever installation by Zhanna Kadyrova.
Born in 1981 in Brovary, Ukraine, Kyiv-based Kadyrova has been among the first Ukrainian artists to make site-specific work. She makes sculptures for public spaces, often consulting with local people and also creates temporary installations, inspired by the spaces where she mounts them.
The installation in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini consists in a series of garments made with collected ceramics from various places. The artist has been working on this long-term project - very aptly entitled "“Second Hand" (2014 – ongoing) - in different locations to make connections between the architectural and social memories of various communities.
The inspiration comes from her home country, Ukraine, that has got a long history of ceramic tile production. Kadyrova usually employs for these works materials sourced from old factories.
Some of the pieces on display here were made for example with tiles from now defunct Soviet-era industrial buildings, including the Darnitsky Silk Factory, the Poliske bus station in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and the Kyiv Motion Picture Printing Plant.
Kadyrova made with the tiles garments with shapes and silhouettes inspired by 1960s and 1970s Soviet fashion.
You can choose between A-line dresses, square shoulder jackets that evoke David Byrne's giant gray suit from the Talking Heads' 1984 live movie Stop Making Sense, T-shirts and scarves, but also more casual pieces like a padded vest.
One of her dresses is also displayed on a dummy between two windows reopened last year in occasion of the architecture Biennale.
The pale blue, brown, white and green tiles used for the dress on the dummy go particularly well with the colours surrounding it – from the dark brown of the Carlo Scarpa window with a geometrical frame with two interlocked circles, to the white and blue boats and the green trees along the canal.
Through the window visitors can see further pieces by Zhanna Kadyrova hanging from a clotheslines, they were made with ceramic tiles from the Hotel All'Angelo in Venice.
Kadyrova started the project shortly before Ukraine introduced decommunisation laws that erased all traces of the country's Soviet past.
While this is an art project with some architectural connotations, Kadyrova's installation also ties in with the recycling and upcycling trends in fashion. It's easy to wonder if she will ever collaborate with a fashion house, maybe reusing ceramic pieces or even tiles created by a fashion designer (Gucci's Alessandro Michele who also works as Creative Director at porcelain manufacturer Ginori?) to make her dresses.
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