Artist statement

1992

Altered Men's Suits, transformation/alterations/metamorphosis, Penelope, 13 Men or Penelope

I am interested in clothing as skins, which project outwards as well as inwards. By taking apart the male business suit I try to discover or analyze the "pattern" on which it is constructed. At the same time metamorphosis implies evolutions of suits into something else. The notion of a metamorphosis suggests, that this happens either through nature taking its course or through magic ( or art) I like the mixture of a bit of both.

By taking the suit apart, graphic contours of patterns become visible, the language (the logical structure) of the suit. The pattern for an arm is always similar and recognizable to any pattern maker, tailor or seamstress. I ask myself: what is the difference between the flat pattern, the sleeve, the visible arm and the arm underneath the skin. How do they influence or define each other. There are other ways to make clothing. Complex ideas are held together seamlessly; but in fact, there are seems, which can be undone.

The flattening of the suits interests me and its relation between the structured surface, created by the woven fabric and its layering onto the body. Woven materials are usually grids, particulalry industrially produced textiles; some pattern emphasize this. Men's suiting fabrics are complex combinations of different colored threads, which produce interesting visual effects, but without drawing attention to themselves. Initially I was mainly concerned with rupturing the structures themselves, but it evolved into an overlaying of new patterns onto the old ones.

Naomi Schor's book entitled Reading in Detail 1989 influenced this work when I chose to focus on apparent arbitrary aspects of business and power. By examining the suit thread by thread, to discover "its point", I try to force myself and the viewer to consider minute and apparently irrelevant details, to loose complete overviews and to start to understand new patterns of logic that are in the process of evolving and not yet fixed, without presenting a clear message. I expect a different picture to emerge  = a Metamorphoses! Other references exist in other recent feminist literary criticism: "The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours" by Janis Joplin Klindienst and "Arachnology" by Nancy Miller (publ. in Poetics of Gender 1988).

On a different level "metamorphoses" comes from Ovid's stories, which are held together by the thread of metamorphosis which occur in each. Many of the stories tell about weaving - the story of Arachne, Philomela, the daughter of Minyas, Penelope and even Ariadne, all women who challenge fate through their weaving, spinning or thread.

My work does take time and this is very apparent. The choosing to spend time on a simple task is relevant as is the relatively tame disruption of fabric patterns in relationship to disrupting symbolically more important systems.