Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Patterns of Gender Resistance: "History Has Failed Us, But No Matter", The Korean Pavilion @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

"History has failed us, but no matter," reads the incipit to Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, a novel about the lives of four generations of Korean people, from Japanese-controlled Korea in the early 20th century to the 1980s Japanese economic boom.

Hyunjin Kim, the curator of this year's Korean Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice (until 24th November), was struck by this sentence that clearly expressed the will and resilience of people, the strength to stand up again under hardships caused not just by the personal failures one may experience in life, but by the course of history.

Moving from this theme, the curator decided to dedicate the pavilion to feminism and gender diversity and include in its spaces works by artists who could engage visitors with an in-depth discourse on these themes and issues and in particular on women who were written out of history.

The choice fell on three women artists - Hwayeon Nam, Jane Jin Kaisen and siren eun young jung - who carried extensive researches on the traditions and history in East Asia, in connection with gender themes. Inside the pavilion the artists wove three different complex narratives that still display some connections.

Hwayeon Nam's video "Dancer from the Peninsula", follows the story of Seunghee Choi (1911–1969), a legendary but controversial choreographer and modern dancer.

Born during the Japanese colonial period, Choi trained with a Japanese dancer, but was still perceived as a "dancer from the peninsula".

She toured Europe, North America, and Latin America, and hoped to develop a uniquely modern East Asian dance that could transcended the boundaries of Korea. Choi returned to Korea after Japan initiated the Pacific War in December 1941 and performed for Japanese soldiers in China as a part of their morale-boosting campaign. At the same time, she announced new works inspired by classical Japanese musical drama noh and Japanese court dance bugaku. During the war, she lived in China and, in 1946, Choi defected to North Korea.

Nam's video rediscovers Choi, but also re-focuses on her art via rare footage and images from archives, and the project is completed by a small garden installed behind the Pavilion, inspired by Choi's 1936 song "A Garden in Italy".

Jane Jin Kaisen's video "Community of Parting" is inspired by oral storytelling embodied by female shamans and looks at the ancient Korean shamanic myth of Bari, a princess that was abandoned because she was born a girl. She was then transformed into a goddess who mediates at the threshold of life and death.

Kaisen reads the myth as a gendered tale of migration, marginalization, and resilience that she tells via images, sounds and archive material. The video, filmed in various locations including Jeju Island, South Korea, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Japan, China, the United States and Germany, features the ritual performance of shaman Koh Sun Ahn, a survivor of the 1948 Jeju Uprising and Massacre in South Korea.

Kaisen's extensive research since 2011 into Korean shamanism and her long-term engagement with communities affected by war and division resonates in narratives by South Korean, North Korean and diasporic women.

siren eun young jung is another artist who carried out an intense ethnographic research project: for a decade, she explored the lost art of "yeoseong gukgeuk", a variation of the better known "changgeuk", in which all parts are played by women.

"Yeoseong gukgeuk started at the end of the 1940s, after the Japanese occupation," siren eun young jung explained to Irenebrination. "At the time there were women who used to entertain, a bit like geishas, and who sometimes would sell their bodies."

"They had musical skills, so, after the occupation they were employed in the music scene. Yet, because of their gender and position, they were stigmatised by society. So they tried to get together and create their own organisation to protect themselves. They created this kind of genre and theatre in which women played all the roles."

"Yeoseong gukgeuk" had its heydays in South Korea of the 1950s and '60s, but lived in the shadows of other genres, with performers being derided by the traditional and contemporary theatre and being also forgotten. For this project siren eun young jung did the sort of research scholars forgot to do, "I started digging in archives, and interpreted their contents in the frame of sexual politics," she says.

"I also went looking for survivors, like second-generation 'yeoseong gukgeuk' actor Deungwoo Lee, the most brilliant male-role actor still performing today. These performers have almost disappeared, there are barely five of them left nowadays. Talking to them is fascinating as they can tell how they transform themselves and how they can make their body like that of a man," siren eun young jung states.  

"In Western culture there is a drag culture, but we don't have that kind of name in Korea, so I tried to find out and interpret it and name it," siren eun young jung explains. 

Raising questions around sexuality, tradition and political resistance, siren eun young jung's "A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity, and Noise", is an audiovisual installation, in which it becomes clear that, while the men represented by "yeoseong gukgeuk" actors may seem like stereotypes, performers like Deungwoo Lee through the elegant and beautiful exaggerated ballim (gestures) and theatrical acting style, shake and provoke the biased notion of gender, representing a unique gender that transcends any specific definition of masculinity.

siren eun young jung's intervention is divided in two parts with one video showing a "yeoseong gukgeuk" performance and another focused on an energetic performance of transgender electronic musician Kirara, lesbian actor Yii Lee, disabled performer/director Jiwon Seo, of Disabled Women's Theater Group "Dancing Waist", and drag king Azangman, who has strived to create a drag culture and community at the feminist-queer intersection. 

There is a clear parallelism between the two videos: in both the videos the artist presents performers who have been or are marginalised. 

"In Korea we have a very heterosexual patriarcal and conservative society and people from minorities aren't really visible," siren eun young jung explains. "I feel that through my work I have to try and find different visible strategies to cure our society; as an artist I have a strong responsibility to intervene and challenge this kind of socially acceptable normativity through what may be perceived as uncomfortable modes of anomalous performativity."

History may have failed them, but the protagonists of the installations in the Korean Pavilion have found through art, dance, music, and performing new patterns of resistance and resilience. 

Image credits for this post

1, 12 and 13, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 The Korean Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice, Installation Views, Courtesy of the Korean Pavilion

2, 3, 9 and 11. The Korean Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice, Installation Views by Anna Battista

4. Hwayeon Nam, Dancer from the Peninsula, multi-channel video installation, dimensions variable, 29', 2019. © Hwayeon Nam. Photo: GIM IKHYUN. The image is taken from Yūsaburō Takashima and Byung-Ho Chung, ed., The Century’s Beauty Dancer Sai Shōki (Tokyo: MT Shuppan, 1994), 100

5. Hwayeon Nam, Dancer from the Peninsula, 2019, multi-channel video installation, dimensions variable, 29’. © Hwayeon Nam. Photo: GIM IKHYUN. Jinyangjo, taken from Choi Seung-hee, Autobiography of Choi Seung-hee (Seoul: Imundang, 1937). Courtesy: Hongcheon-gun

6. Hwayeon Nam, Dancer from the Peninsula, 2019, multi-channel video installation, dimensions variable, 29’. © Hwayeon Nam. Photo: GIM IKHYUN. In Paris, 1939, Soorim Art Center (Ha Jungwoong Gallery), Photography Exhibition of the dancer Choi Seung-hee from the Ha Jungwoong Collection LEAP & EXTENSION Catalogue for the opening exhibition of Soorim Art Center in commemoration of Kim Hee-su (Seoul: Soorim Cultural Foundation, 2016), 42.

7 and 8. Hwayeon Nam, Dancer from the Peninsula, 2019, multi-channel video installation, dimensions variable. © Hwayeon Nam Hwayeon Nam, Dancer from the Peninsula, 2019, multi-channel video installation, dimensions variable. © Hwayeon Nam

10. Jane Jin Kaisen, Community of Parting, 2019, stills from projected film in double-channel video installation, 1h12'22”. © Jane Jin Kaisen

14, 15 and 16. siren eun young jung, A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity, and Noise, 2019, audiovisual installation, multi-channel video, stereo and 5.1 surround sound, dimensions variable. © siren eun young jung 

Protection Vs Entrapment: Shakuntala Kulkarni Speaks About Her "Bodies, Armour and Cages" Installation @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

In one photograph included in Shakuntala Kulkarni's "Of Bodies, Armour and Cages" installation at the 58th International Art Exhibition, in Venice (until 24th November), the artist is portrayed standing with a sculptural pose on a sort of plinth, looking like a statue or a benevolent goddess; in another she is posing on the roof of a building like a super heroine ready to fly above the city surrounding her.

In both the images Kulkarni is wearing rather peculiar attires, cane armours complete with accessories such as helmets, arm and leg protections.

The pieces were developed around ten years ago when the Indian artist started thinking about new ways to approach sensitive themes in her work and in particular the violation of women's bodies and spaces.

Kulkarni followed rape cases in India and she felt compelled to address the issue of women living in fear and under threat, and being unsafe in public and domestic spaces.

Looking for ways to protect the female body, Kulkarni designed and developed a series of complex armours made with cane, a resilient yet flexible material, but she soon realised that there was a dichotomy behind her work - armours had to protect the body, but they also seemed to constrict and confine it. 

Indeed, the decorative elements of the cane armours, their intricate swirls and feminine puffy sleeves didn't guarantee any freedom, but turned into a form of punishment and entrapment. By wearing them in everyday situations around Mumbai, Kulkarni addressed therefore a series of issues, from the condition of urban women living within patriarchal societal structures to pain, claustrophobia and alienation.

The more she went around Mumbai in her armours, the more Kulkarni realised she wasn't just reclaiming spaces for women, but also for the entire city.

She was indeed guarding the heritage of a city and of its buildings, opposing the invasion of cultural and historical spaces. 

Kulkarni's installation - featuring plenty of accessories and two armours (one of them displaying some links in its construction with the skirt frame of Manipuri dancers) - is part of the India Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. The pavilion features an extensive collective exhibition with 8 artists presenting works celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

There is a link between Gandhi's spinning cotton yarn and Kulkarni's installation: the artist combines in her work urban life with rural artisan skills. Her armours are indeed made by weaving natural cane and to make them she worked with a cane craftsman and a weaver from a village in Assam.

None of them had ever made cane sculptures and the process was symbolic as it dissolved socio-economic disparities and artistic hierarchies, creating a common ground and a space for collaboration, symbolising a return to indigenous crafts and age-old artisan skils. 

What's the main aim of your armours?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: Through my works and my protective costumes I'm addressing the violation of women's spaces and in particular violence on the female body. When I started thinking about the theme of protection, I wondered what kind of materials I could have used and in which ways I could have protected the body. I've always been fascinated by armours and in any museum I ever visited there were always armours, so I naturally thought about them. Armours are usually beautifully done, they are works of art if you think about the materials used, the way they are assembled or the way the joints are made. But men's armours usually look strong as they were made for men to fight in a battle. I wanted to create instead armours for the female body and I didn't want my armours to look masculine, but to be grand and magnificent, because they should have celebrated the female body. So I started searching for a material that would have provided me with some kind of balance between strength and vulnerability.

Is that the reason why you opted for cane?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: Yes, I settled down with cane because it is very organic, it is very tenacious and strong, but also very linear and delicate. When you heat it, cane twists and turns and I liked all these qualities. The real challenge was that I had never worked with cane before. As an artist I started with painting and then I went on to do other things like creating walking sculptures, making videos and performances, but I had never used cane before. So I started experimenting with a person who isn't an artist, but a cane chair repairman.

Which were the main challenges you went through while working with cane?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: It took me a long time to find the right person who could collaborate with me. For almost a year I failed and had to start all over again. When I found the proper craftsman, I tried to get to know his language and culture to get into his world. You see, in India, we have different languages and cultures and for me communicating with people is important. My work is not about the production, but about communication, conversation, negotiation, so there was a lot of background research to do for this project. In the end things worked pretty well as the cane craftsman was really fantastic, because he was actually more than an artist and introduced some innovations as well. He managed to convert my pencil drawings into cane sculptures, and this involved a lot of experimenting as we had to technically adapt and alter quite a few things.

Some of the armours seem to be inspired by Haute Couture silhouettes: were you looking at fashion while designing them?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: I tried to come up with elaborate dresses, because I wanted to dress the body in something beautiful. The shapes and silhouettes are not inspired by a particular fashion, even though there are echoes of Indian skirts and ancient Roman helmets. In the headgear there is also my fascination with Bollywood hairstyles and there are links with the power and meaning of masks. But I tried to combine different styles together as I do not believe in one nationality or in a particular religion, but I believe in humanity. I felt that working in this way was very interesting, as it gave me a lot of scope to experiment and try out different things. By mixing various styles I felt I brought all the world together. Last but not least, the styles of the armours also incorporate my own memories as some elements and inspirations were borrowed from my children's wardrobe and from garments like my son's first dungarees. So I did a research through costume history, but also through personal memories.

Do you feel that, for their shapes and silhouettes, your armours also have connections with the Bauhaus and in particular with the costumes in Oskar Schlemmer's "Triadisches Ballett" (Triadic Ballet)?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: The armours do have a connection with architecture, because they are walking sculpture, but they are also linked with ballet, dance, moving, exercising and yoga. My family's background is in theatre and film, so, even though I'm trained as an artist, I grew up as part of the performing world. I actually did also performances with the armours.

There seems to be a duplicity behind the armours as they dress and protect the female body, but they also seem to trap it: is confinement another theme of your project?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: Yes, it is. When you prepare to wear the pieces you feel a bit like a princess getting ready for a ceremony, you dress up slowly and you decorate your body with the costume and with all its accessories - the rings, bangles and headgear. So there the pieces adorn, respect and celebrate your body. Yet, when I was wearing the armours day in and day out and performing, I found that, while the costumes were meant for protection, my body was getting trapped as well. Because of the way I designed the structures, the arms of the wearer do not move easily, you can for example only move them forward or your neck will get caught. You also have to walk sideways while wearing some of these costumes, so also your legs are confined. I purposefully tried to make things uncomfortable to represent how unsafe and difficult it is to navigate through private and public spaces for women and how self-expression gets limited.

Your installation at the Venice Biennale features both your armours and pictures portraying you posing in urban environments in your cane outfits: where were the pictures taken and do you feel that this project has also some connections with architecture?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: Once the armours were finished I put them on and did a photographic project in the city of Mumbai, where I live. I chose it as the set for this shoot because there's so much ruthless planning going on there. There are a lot of new buildings coming up and a lot of heritage buildings are being destroyed. This means we are losing the culture and the heritage we are proud of, and in this way children won't know the history of the place. For example, in Mumbai we were very famous for cotton mills, but most of them are gone now. The land was sold and the mills were destroyed to give way to other buildings. I heard that some of the old buildings may be replaced by malls and, while there are people who have organisations against this new urban developments, the authorities will still get on with the plans and will do anything they want once you elect them. Through the pictures I wanted to address all these issues and remind people that, with high rises being built without sensible planning, we won't be able to see the blue sky anymore and the views on our beaches, among the few public spaces left in Mumbai, will be blocked. By wearing the armours in such environments, I'm reclaiming the spaces to protect history and culture, to protest and resist. So in a way the armours have got multiple meanings and purposes, you can use them to protest against the violation of women's bodies, but you can also conceive them as tools to look at issues such as entrapment and confinement, or as costumes to reclaim your space.

Did you ever feel vulnerable while walking around Mumbai in your armours?
Shakuntala Kulkarni: Power is just one theme of the project, vulnerability another. I'm definitely addressing the vulnerability as in my project I talk about deflecting the gaze, but, when I walk in the streets in my armours, I invite the gaze. At that moment I become vulnerable, because hundreds of people are staring at me. So, yes, there is definitely a sort of balance between feeling powerful and becoming vulnerable in this project.

A Collective Walk in Padukas: G.R. Iranna's "Naavu" (We Together) @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

Quite often we give for granted the objects we engage the most with in our daily lives and we forget about the symbolism that may be hiding behind them.

Think about shoes, for example: travel around the world, ask people of different religions, and you will discover proverbs, common expressions and symbolisms linked with shoes.

While protecting the wearer's own journey, shoes are conceived by some as symbols of authority, power and domination, and they can hint at wealth (remember the perilously high French chopines and Venetian calcagnini?), vanity and arrogance (think about Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Red Shoes").

Yet, they can also represent humility, obedience and servitude and our contact with Earth, that's why in some religions wearers remove their shoes when approaching a holy place. 

Shoes are the main materials behind G.R. Iranna (Iranna Rukumpur)'s installation "Naavu" (We Together) at the 58th International Art Exhibition, in Venice (until 24th November).

The installation - part of the India Pavilion that features an extensive collective exhibition with 8 artists presenting works celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi - consists indeed in a sea of padukas or wooden slippers.

New Delhi-based G.R. Iranna is a mixed media artist, working mainly with painting, videos and sculptures. He likes to explore a variety of issues including freedom and space boundaries and often displays in his work a strong link with and deep empathy for the working class and farmers. 

For this installation he was inspired by the fact that Gandhi used to walk every day for around 18 kilometers, and walked 79,000 km during his movement for India's independence.  

G.R. Iranna's padukas represent thousands of footprints (the word "paduka" can also refer to the footprints of divine figures such as Vishnu and Shiva and other religious icons), feet and therefore people embarking on a physical and spiritual non-violent walk with Gandhi.

This link with Gandhi is also represented by the fact that padukas, India's oldest footwear, are designed to ensure that the principle of non-violence is not violated by accidental trampling on insects and vegetation.

Contemplated from a distance, the swarm of padukas inside the exhibition space looks like a uniform and dynamic wave, moving forward; on closer inspection, though, you realise that each shoe is elaborately decorated in a different way.

The elements and objects decorating or mounted on the padukas - bells, miniature musical instruments, cameras, scissors, paint brushes, keys, small paintings depicting chairs, clocks or drums - transform the humble sandals into works of art, metaphorically hinting at individuality and ultimately symbolising people from all social classes and professions joining Gandhi in his walk.    

Streams of Stories: Marco Godinho's "Written by Water" @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

There are artworks and installations at the 58th International Art Exhibition (until 24th November) in Venice that somehow seem to have a link with the current situation of emergency in the city, that in the last few days had to deal with a series of devastating floods.

The intervention of Portuguese-born artist Marco Godinho for the Luxembourg Pavilion focuses for example on the ambivalent relationship that mankind entertains with the sea.

A constant fascination for all of us, the sea has always been a territory for real-life adventures and exploratory journeys, a place of legends and a fantastically epic space that still hides from us unexplored depths.

Yet in the last few years the sea has become synonymous with tragedy: think for example about the Mediterranean Sea that turned into a grave for all those migrants who didn't manage to cross it.

A nomadic explorer of geographical, political and philosophical borders, Godinho invites visitors to contemplate in his "Written by Water" installation a vast landscape of paper notebooks that were immersed in the water in different locations around the Mediterranean Sea (Godinho started the project in 2013).

The pages are crumpled and ruined, so they can't be used to take notes, but the artist employs the notebooks as symbols.

They represent indeed stories written by millions of people and show that we are part of a vast flux of collective fates.

The notebooks carry people's stories and the sea in perpetual motion lulls their thoughts and memories, cherishes the tales of millions of invisible souls, and, at times, sadly and fatally rewrites their destinies in unforeseeable and tragic ways.

Immersive Leather Landscapes: Zahrah Al-Ghamdi's "After Illusion" @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

What do the leather barnacle-like elements climbing on the fabric covered columns and spreading through Zahrah Al-Ghamdi's installation "After Illusion" stand for? Are they living organisms reminiscent of sea urchins or maybe eggs left behind by an alien parasite? These are maybe some of the questions visitors entering Al-Ghamdi's installation at the Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 58th International Art Exhibition, in Venice, may wonder.

"After Illusion" is indeed an immersive environment, a vast landscape filled with 50,000 handmade cotton-filled leather pieces, each of them handmade through a time-consuming process involving cutting, stuffing, sewing, shredding, boiling, drying and burning leather.

Zahrah Al-Ghamdi is known for her site-specific installations that are assembled using natural materials such as sand, rocks and leather, but this is her first monumental work.

Born in 1977 in the village of al-Asalah, Saudi Arabia, Zahrah Al-Ghamdi graduated from King Abdulaziz University, then moved to the UK where she pursued an MA in Contemporary Craft and a PhD in Design and Visual Arts from Coventry University.

Al-Ghamdi now lives and works in Jeddah where she teaches at the local university and where she develops her work that often focuses on the memory of traditional architectures from south western Saudi Arabia. Besides, the artist uses her work to present to the world a more positive and optimistic future for her country, while rejecting through her practice negative stereotypes regarding Saudi women.

Growing up in the south western region of Saudi Arabia, surrounded by traditional Aseeri architecture, played an integral role in her practice. Al-Ghamdi's favours indeed the use of natural materials such as soil, to pay homage to time and memory, nostalgia and historical architectural traditions. 

In her mural "Labyrinth and Time" (2017) Al-Ghamdi used for example sand, cotton and water to recreate elements of Southern Saudi Arabian architecture. The final result called to mind the old-style of building houses in the south, with mud and water.

In "Inanimate Village" (2017) the artist arranged instead linear piles of sand mixed with dirt and small objects found in her birthplace on the ground to recreate the foundations of a building, hinting at abandoned or destroyed architectures in old Saudi villages evoking in this way feelings of melancholy and sorrow.

The installation "After Illusion" has a precise starting point: the title is inspired by a line from an ancient Arabic poem written by Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520-609), in which he described his struggle to recognise his home after being away for twenty years. Illusion came to his rescue, facilitating knowledge and helping the eighty-year-old poet recognising his home.

Al-Ghamdi's installation revolves around a series of dichotomies - past Vs present, traditions Vs future, handmade Vs machine made.

The immersive, mysterious and imaginary landscape the artist created for the Biennale is designed to engaged the senses: lights stimulate the sight; leather invites visitors to touch the pieces; the sweet scent of burnt leather reawakens the sense of smell, while hearing is activated when visitors touch the leather spheres attached to the fabric columns inside the pavilion and hear audio recordings of the artist preparing her work (there is also a video in the pavilion that shows how the leather spheres in the installation are made).

Through the installation Al-Ghamdi demontrates also her level of craftsmanship: this is not the first time the artist employs these leather spheres in her work. The elements had indeed already appeared in another (smaller) installation entitled "Mycelium Running", but this is the first installation in which Al-Ghamdi expressly invites visitors to interact with her work, and create connections with her own past.

Leather, a material that the artists considers as close to earth because of its natural colour, has indeed a special meaning for Al-Ghamdi since it represents a connection with her past and her childhood memories of the time when she accompanied her grandfather to herd his sheep.

Last but not least, leather also hints at human transformation: the material ages and hardens with time just like human beings. We do indeed change in accordance with the experiences we go through that make us stronger and help us facing different challenges and obstacles.

Beauty is not just in the installation as a whole, but also in the crafting process behind the entire installation, something that will probably lead the artist to collaborate one day with fashion houses renowned for their masterful knowledge of leather (Bottega Veneta? Loewe? Bets are open...).

From Magic Colours & Densely Populated Urban Fantasylands to Lenticular Logographs & Abstract Geometries: Swatch Faces 2019 @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

On Tuesday night Venice was hit by heavy rain, followed by a flood. The acqua alta (high water) reached 1.87 metres, the highest level since 1966, and there was more rain in the following days (St Mark's Square was closed this morning and a state of emergency declared).

The adverse events, clearly the result of climate change, as the city mayor highlighted, and the proof of the Mose project failure (designed in the late '80s to protect Venice from high tides, but actually never finished and never put into operation), caused structural damages on many landmark buildings of the Unesco world heritage site.

Most museums closed down, while the 58th International Art Exhibition venues closed on Wednesday, but reopened on Thursday (the organisers announced the main Biennale venues - the Arsenale and Giardini - are going to be open every day until the end of the Biennale, Sunday, November 24th, while most of the venues of the collateral events will remain closed), experiencing a record number of visitors – 1,300 people by noon on Thursday.  

It is hard putting a brave face and being optimistic during catastrophic events, but art can help us, so let's look today at something colourful and upbeat on display at the 58th International Art Biennale - the Swatch Faces pavilion.  

This space located in the Arsenale is sponsored by Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch and features a display dedicated to a group of young artists who did residencies at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel between 2017 and 2018.

Located in one of the most iconic buildings on Shanghai's Bund, the hotel allows artists coming from all over the world to live in its spaces for 3 to 6 months and work on individual or joint projects. 

One of the first artists you encounter in the installation is Tracey Snelling who creates mixed media installations inspired by her travels and life experiences in China.

For the Swatch Art Peace Hotel the Berlin-based American artist created "Shanghai / Chongqing Hot Pot / Mixtape", a fantasy urban environment composed of tall buildings (not exact recreations of specific buildings, but the artist's own versions of real structures) in which she has integrated not just kitsch souvenirs and random objects, but also videos from her personal experiences.

Some of the windows in her buildings feature static images, others integrate videos showing her with friends as they mix drinks in a bar or as the artist gets her skin inked in a tattoo shop. Snelling's buildings are accompanied by a wall installation (from the "Clusterfucks" series), a layered and chaotic jumble of colours, props and paraphernalia that captures her complex and varied experience in a challenging country.

While Snelling's representation of a densely populated city links her with the architectural discipline, other artists seem to have random connections with fashion.

"This Moment is Magic" by South Korean artist Dorothy M. Yoon for example includes 24 embroidered magic wands and 7 multi-coloured costumes that wouldn't look out of place in a fantasy manga.

There is actually a story of pain behind the multi-coloured fabrics and threads the artist employed for her pieces: a few years ago, Yoon was diagnosed with cancer. Her chemotheraphy involved an analgesic injection that relieved pain, but also made her feel "vivid, colourful, electric flares, as if fireworks were fizzing everywhere inside myself," the artist recounts.

Yoon transformed her experience of pain and agony, reimagining the injection as a colour-striped magic wand and creating a wardrobe for her chemical arousal, personified by a magic rainbow girl fighting against evil.

The embroidered magic wands are combinations of the Eastern and Western zodiac signs, rendered in the same multi-coloured stripes Yoon used for the costumes.

Yoon's installation is an affirmation of joy and her artistic practice is focused on turned the memory of pain and suffering into a magic fantasy.  

There is also another artist in this space that has some connections with textiles, but also with graphic design - Jessie Yingying Gong.

Gong's "Enfolding" project revolves around a fascinating topic - gendered scripts - that she combined with issues such as memory, identity, traditions and languages.

Born and raised in China, Gong moved from her own background and from her fascination with languages for this project and in particular from Nüshu, in Chinese "women's writing", a writing system developed by and only passed on among the female population of small villages in South Hunan Province. Derived from square Chinese characters, Nüshu has a whimsical shape, calling to mind dancing figures. 

In more or less the same way in Japan women developed Onnade (Women's Hand or Hirogana) and used it for literature, private communications among each other and waka poems (while Kanji was instead used by men and used on official documents). 

Gong employed the two characters to tell a story of history and memory about women giving themselves a voice in a patriarchal society. In her lenticular works Gong merged the two styles, to show how the Chinese characters combine with the Japanese tradition. Gong also did a round table embroidery session at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel with ordinary people who embroidered their own Nüshu characters on a black panel, creating a composition that seems to feature an abstract alien alphabet. 

Last but not least, Spanish artist Santiago Aleman is also featured in the pavilion with his "Levo" polyptich. Aleman is trained as an architect, but creates paintings at the intersection between spatial structures and volumetric paintings. "Levo" is a 14-piece conceptual altarpiece with shapes and textures creating what may look like a simple composition, but actually resulting in a complex combination of colours that create abstract geometrical elements.  

Swatch sometimes commissions designs for its products to the artists who did a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel and it would be intriguing to see what kind of watches some of the artists included in this showcase may come up with. Maybe a rainbow-striped watch integrated into a magic wand or, who knows, a lenticular watch face? It is difficult to guess, but, somehow, you know that the colours and textures used by these artists would give you hope even in the darkest times.     

Italian Fashion Chamber Issues Guidelines & Interpretative Rules for Influencers

Over a decade ago when the first fashion bloggers arrived on the scene, the main players in the fashion industry didn't immediately grasp their potential. Things developed quickly, though, and soon from the street and the backstage, bloggers infiltrated the front row, becoming a major sensation. Sadly, any potentially anarchic intent they may have had to disrupt the fashion industry was soon eliminated when some of them became more high profile than others, were co-opted by the fashion industry and started collaborating with brands. Yet the biggest revolution to come was represented by the new wave of influencers (and bloggers turned influencers...): helped by the power of social media, influencers became the next big thing, while Instagram turned into their favourite digital platform to visually engage with their fans.

Influencers brought with them a new style, collaborating with brands and fashion houses, but also receiving gifts, trips or money in exchange for endorsing a product. An influencer's endorsement can definitely generate both media and real revenues that's why companies started allocating large parts of their advertising budgets to influencer marketing campaigns. Yet such practices have also mined the integrity and objectivity of influencers, ending up generating confusion in those consumers who may find it difficult to distinguish between lifestyle posts and advertising messages.

Authorities around the world, studied the phenomenon and the US Federal Trade Commission, explored the consequences of the promotional/professional dichotomy in the life of influencers, issuing conduct guidelines to make sure consumers became more aware.

Italy has been slower than other countries regulating collaborations between brands and influencers, but Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (Italian Fashion Chamber) is trying to catch up and has just issued a document entitled "Guidelines and Interpretative Rules for Influencers".

"Influencers have turned out to be one the most effective marketing tools thanks to the immediacy of the message that they convey and to the fact that they have integrated promotional activities within the ordinary day, thus making them essentially indistinguishable from the everyday life activities," states the document.

The short document, written with the support of attorneys at Deloitte Legal and based on the US Federal Trade Commission guidelines (a deliberate choice since, as the CNMI explains, many Italian brands deal with American consumers) and on Part 255 of Title 16 of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, then suggests which best practices fashion brands should embrace when collaborating with social media influencers.

The guidelines make a distinction between celebrities and influencers (even though boundaries blur at times as influencers can be celebrities and vice versa...), then they highlight how the #ad/#adv hashtags may be confusing and misleading, especially when they refer to a product or garment supplied for a particular occasion that the consumer may think is actually available in shops. Besides, it may be difficult for a brand expecting a celebrity or influencer to post about a product they may have sent to them for a special occasion (think for example a red carpet event). The Italian Fashion Chamber suggests therefore four good practices to implement: suggesting companies to draft a policy "specifying the rules of conduct that influencers should comply to when promoting its products, providing, i.e., specific disclosure obligations in case the brand has paid the influencer to wear its product, hashtag positioning, etc…"; drafting a contract with the influencer or the agency that manages their images; asking the influencer to sign the policy and, last but not least, in case of gifts to influencers, insert a "Thank you" card, referring them to the policy and asking the influencer to post a content which specifies - "Thank you [brand] for the gift of the [product]."

Besides, the Fashion Chamber also adds that it could be appropriate for brands to discuss with national and international authorities other issues such as the inclusion of a different hashtag for gifts (#gift followed by the brand name), and consider a possible hashtag for loans of clothes and accessories. Other suggestions include specifying in more detailed ways when and how to use the hashtag #ad/#adv/#sponsored (only in the first post? What about follow-ups? Should brand employees also use it?); establishing that, in case of low value, it may not be necessary to insert any hashtag if the brand only pays the influencers the expenses for participation to specific events.

While the Fashion Chamber guidelines are the first document of their kind compiled in Italy, they are still too basic and a bit lazy as well, being mainly based on what the US Federal Commission suggests regarding to influencers. In a way they represent a missed opportunity to regulate things better (should they have added the case of influencers "failing to influence" and should company self-regulate themselves and limit the numbers of influencers they employ to avoid brand dilution?) while hoping that one day a proper legislation will be drafted. At the same time, the guidelines are a step forward in this field and actually remind us that in a globalised world there aren't internationally agreed-upon laws regarding influencers. More changes may come in future, but in the meantime high-profile influencers may not be so worried by such rules and regulations as they are too busy rebelling to the experimental removal of "like" counts on Instagram. 

In April Instagram accounced it would start testing the possibility of hiding "like" counts on posts. The feature has so far been tested in different countries including Australia, Ireland, Canada and the US. While "like" counts generate a terrible competitive culture, especially among young people who are often led to believe that quantity is better than quality, quite a few celebrities and influencers were outraged as such a feature may lead to a reduction of Instagram engagement and damage their chances of getting more brand deals.    

At the moment there aren't huge changes for the main influencers and most of them still seem to have an engagement above the norm, but, who knows, maybe in between digital influencers on the rise, guidelines regulating collaborations with brands and the removal of the "like" count, we will see a decrease in the actual number of influencers as trend forecaster Li Ederlkoort predicted a while back. 

The Wondrous Story of Power Dolls: "Trampoline: Resilience & Black Body & Soul" by Vanessa German @ Fort Gansevoort, New York

Coffee paper bags and dog food bags, tins, cowrie shells, discarded toys, cutlery and beads. Most of us do not certainly file such objects under the "art" category. Yet such everyday materials become as precious as the finest marble in the hands of Vanessa German. The award-winning artist, sculptor, poet, performer and activist assembles them in complex and intricate ways to create visually striking pieces like the ones that are currently part of the exhibition "Trampoline: Resilience & Black Body & Soul" (until 21st December) at Fort Gansevoort (5 Ninth Avenue, New York).

Born in 1976 in Wisconsin, German grew up in Los Angeles where her mother, a fiber artist, encouraged her and her siblings to be creative.

The artist now lives and works in the Homewood community of Pittsburgh where she founded the community art initiative Love on the Front Porch and ARThouse. The project allows children to explore their artistic skills and saves them from violence as art, German states, has a transformative power. German has also created a performance style called "Spoken Word Opera" that combines operatic drama with contemporary poetry, hip hop and storytelling.

The artist makes her works employing objects she finds in in Pittsburgh, items that speak to her and that have personal stories to tell. She then proceeds to integrate them into her mixed media sculptures and three-dimensional collages that tackle themes such as gender, identity, injustice, violence, discrimination, racism, worthlessness, Queerness and the oppression of African Americans.

The artist's starting point is Toni Morrison's call at the 1993 Nobel Lecture in Literature. In her speech the author invited all writers, and therefore artists as well, to "Make up a story...For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."

German moves from that stitch to create sculptures that she calls "power dolls", statues of female figures with their heads painted black and their bodies made of a wide range of found objects, ingeniously manipulated and cleverly assembled.

The power dolls come in life-size and small scales, they are dressed in skirts made of coffee paper bags or dog food; their bodies incorporate shells and beads, coins and buttons, rusty nails and bottle caps, religious symbols and kitsch statuines; multiple necklaces cover their legs, while cutlery, broken watches and embroidered appliqued and sequinned patches decorate their dresses. German recycles, reuses and repurposes, she hates wasting materials, but her sustainability comes from a need to provide us with visually strong and intricate messages.   

German's "power dolls" included in "Trampoline: Resilience & Black Body & Soul" (an event in association with Pavel Zoubok Fine Art) represent women running away from violent persecutors, they are abandoned children or mothers, but they are never victims.

They are symbol of past traumas and physical representations of the power of self-preservation; they are Madonnas praying for the victims and witnesses of gun violence; they represent utopian beings, goddesses set to triumph and help those who adore them. Above all, they are active odes to resilience, hybrid beings representing acts of love in response to the injustices and violence committed against Black and Brown people. 

The exhibition at Fort Gansevoort also features wall-mounted altars made with objets trouvés representing carriers of joy and love set to protect the souls of Black Americans, and portraits like those of tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams integrating tennis rackets, and reminding us that we often use symbols and ojbects to represent Black women rather than considering them for the champions they are (think about all the times Serena Williams faced criticism for the outfits she donned at tennis championships, a debate that reshifted the attention of people from her skills to her style). 

Power and strength are the keyword to unlock German's message that is ultimately one of love for Black Americans. As she states indeed in the exhibition press release, "I am in love with the deep survival, elastic resilience and ordinary, creative, genius of Black People. For the ways that we make ourselves bright against he slaughter of our own names - acts of ordinary, restorative, creative insistence. The insistent force of making, seeing, playing, protection - loving - whose evidence shapes the culture of a society that never visioned the Black Body into freedom, resources, or power." 

Image credits for this post

All images courtesy of the artist, Fort Gansevoort and Pavel Zoubok Fine Art, New York. 

Vanessa German
Big Smile
2019
66.5 x 60 x 6.5 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
It's the real thing
2019
84 x 48.5 x 16 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
You Will Have to do Your Best to Fly Away From Them Hands That Come to Take You Outta Your Own Soul
2019
96 x 48 x 14.5 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
Can I Love You Without Capitalism?
How?
2019
59 x 67.5 x 26 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
Hyper Sensitive
Feeling Machine
Body.Soul.Emotion.
Volume Control
2019
55 x 30 x 17 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
Hammer Head
Rage Machine
Agony Machine
Baptism
2019
70 x 36 x 26 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
Joy Machine #3
Kick Push
Ring The Alarm
Fly
2019
54 x 94 x 22 in
Mixed-media assemblage

Vanessa German
HEAVY
(the heart and the love to carry in the body)
and, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, in reflection on Love and Responsibility; Responsible Loving.
HEAVY on Black Girls and the systemic torture of their Innocence. HEAVY. The perceived living response to a lack of, or dearth of a Innocence.
The Cost Of it.
2019
101 x 31 x 22 in
Mixed-media assemblage

What Makes a Gallery Successful: "Art on Display" @ The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal

What makes a gallery or museum successful? Definitely a wide range of factors, from the nature of the work of art (be it a costume, a statue, a painting or smaller objects like vases or jewellery) to the display supports that may be used; from the features of the exhibition space to the degree of engagement that the artwork on display, but also the captions accompanying it, may offer to visitors.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Av. Berna, 45A, Lisbon, Portugal) has currently got an exhibition about displaying techniques as deviced by famous architects and designers.

"Art on Display 49-69" (until 2nd March 2020) has got a precise starting point - the display solutions found for the opening of the Museum in 1969.

The exhibition was indeed inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, but also stands independently and aims at investigating the way we look at art and the way in which art is presented to us by curators and museums.

When it opened in 1969 the Gulbenkian Museum was recognised as a successful model and it was considered as timeless and in this exhibition curators Penelope Curtis and Dirk van den Heuvel attempt to make comparisons and juxtapositions between the Gulbenkian and other events located in other country such as Italy, The Netherlands, Britain and Brazil, with spaces designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, Carlo Scarpa, Lina Bo Bardi, Aldo van Eyck and Alison and Peter Smithson, architects who respond in original ways to the challenges of creating new spaces for mass entertainment.

Curators look for example at how Franca Helg and Franco Albini tried to bring paintings into the real world, removing the frames with which paintings had been fitted posthumously and making them lighter.

Carlo Scarpa also took paintings away from the wall, creating stands for them, while Lina Bo Bardi used thin metal supports stabilised with cables, as well as some light screens, coming up with democratic approaches that broke with the past and produced shock and curiosity in the visitors.

In Holland, Van Eyck tried multiple ways of introducing new ways of presenting art, most notably in the maze or labyrinth he created in 1965 out of concrete blocks. His concern to make the experience of looking at art more playful are echoed in the Smithsons' designs for the Tate Gallery with a huge number of recent artworks assembled in rooms designed to disguise the museum itself.

Rather than looking at specific art objects, the event at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum analyses the language of display and the structures designed both for permanent museums and for temporary exhibitions, wondering if the experience of art should be shocking or comforting, if it should be isolating or if it is more enjoyable to consider it as a collective moment to be shared with other people.  

Curators do not provide definitive answers, but invite visitors to take in the museum spaces where they move, the arrangements of objects and the display cases, and consider how an exhibition works, and in which ways a designer or an architect can emphasise an environment through intriguing and visually striking elements. In April 2020 the exhibition, an associate project of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019, will reach out to more visitors, travelling from Lisbon to Rotterdam where it will be held at the Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Image credits for this post

1. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Islamic East gallery, 1970. Photo: Mário de Oliveira

2. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Hall, 1980. Photo: Manuel Ventura

3.Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Renaissance Art gallery, 1970. Photo: Mário de Oliveira

4. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Works by René Lalique, 1970. Photo: Mário de Oliveira

5. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Far Eastern gallery, 1970. Photo: Mário de Oliveira

6. Calouste Gulbenkian Museu. Rest area, 1970. Photo: Mário de Oliveira

7. View of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo collection on the 'crystal' easels, 1970
MASP Research Centre Collection

8. Franco Albini and Franca Helg, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, 1949–51. Fondazione Franco Albini, 29/51
© Fondazione Franco Albini. All Rights Reserved

9. Students visiting the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 1983
MASP Research Centre Collection

Making Sense: Textile Captions @ Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

They say that when Pablo Picasso visited the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and saw Francesco Hayez's "The Kiss" (1859), he reached out and tried to touch the pale blue dress of the woman in the painting. He wanted indeed to check if the fabric was really painted or if it was real.

Inspired by this story the curators at Brera started thinking about how to create connections between paintings and the power of our senses and, when they came to touch, they decided to opt for textile captions.

Selected paintings in the gallery are accompanied by a display with samples of fabrics replicating the textiles in the paintings. The process has been a bit slow as the paintings are matched with luxurious textiles produced by the best companies around, but it is definitely effective.

The latest addition to the collection is a pale blue Satin Duchesse (Article 1324) fabric by Como-based Taroni that accompanies Hayez's famous painting representing a couple embracing and kissing each other, considered as a representation of the spirit of the Risorgimento. 

Francesco Hayez chose for the dress a splendid fine silk satin probably imported from China and popular with the upper classes and Taroni's sample creates a perfect connection with the painting.

This is the fifth textile caption at the Pinacoteca, but visitors can discover more, including a damasked textiles by Rubelli accompanying Crivelli's Camerino Triptych (Triptych of Saint Domenico) and his Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Ansovinus and St. Jerome / Madonna of the Candle (1488-1490).

Rubelli boasts a rich collection of textile documents dated between the 15th and 20th century and recreated the textiles exhibited at Brera with four manual looms from the 1700s.

Brera also invites visitors to experience paintings via their café menu to stimulate taste and music events to sharpen the visitors' hearing. For what regards smell, some paintings were recently matched with special fragrances curated by perfumier Lorenzo Villoresi, founder of the first museum of perfume in Italy. 

For example a diffuser placed next to the Adoration of the Magi by Gaudenzio Ferrari allows to smell myrrh, while Crivelli's Madonna of the Candle is accompanied by a sweet fragrance of Lilium candidum (also known as Madonna lily). 

The museum hopes that these multi-sense activities and synesthetic associations will help visitors of all ages contemplating beauty and discovering more details about particular paintings. Hopefully, the textile captions will also prove inspiring for fashion design students and designers interested in establishing further connections with art in their creations.