Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?
According to Tolga Yilmaz (2009), Chalayan's Afterwords Collection was inspired by the story of refugees and the idea of having to leave home in times of trouble.
The transformation of furniture into dresses, carrying cases, and a skirt suggests the necessity of leaving one’s home in a hurry with nothing but the clothes on one’s back.
Recalling the plight of Turkish Cypriots (including his own family) who were subjected to ethnic cleansing in Cyprus following its Independence in 1960, Chalayan translated the refugee experience and the desire to hide possessions and take them on departure into dress.
When watching "Afterwords" my main reaction was a certain shock or amazement. I found that for someone to deform a piece of furniture to create a winter dress or skirt was a concept that had really amused me. I personally appeal to this collection as you see how daring Chalayan's work is, in taking architecture and household objects to create fashion.
Chalayan’s autumn/winter collection show in 2000, features models wearing dresses as well as having them nude, the Burka (1996) is based around the idea of the “traditional Islamic chador, as a comment on the treatment of women in Muslim societies.” (Regine,2005)
Seeing a fashion show where the woman are half or nearly completely nude, i am pushed to question the work, whether or not it really can be considered fashion, or is it an artistic expression of the ideas that he has focused on in this exhibition. I find that it was not the clothes that made the exhibition, but the presentation and how it really expressed the theme. you could say that fashion is not always about the clothes, but is an art form, a way of expressing a person, a theme or an issue.
Although i do feel that such a theme or idea can be seen as a bit of a risk, to portray and exploit Islamic tradition in such a form can in some ways if not most be seen as highly disrespectful. I find such work really challenges the viewer thoughts and opinions.
2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?
Many artists do collaborate with businesses to promote and better a product or design. This can create more opportunities and positive outcomes for both the business and the artist. When Chalayan was asked to design and create an installation to promote and reflect the taste of Level Vodka, according to (The Level Tunnel by Hussein Chalayan, 2008), “The idea is to engage in a captivating sensual experience of scent, sound and touch. I want to match all senses – excluding vision – to emphasize the exceptional taste of Level Vodka...”. Such work can still be considered art as with this he is bringing in aspects of product design, making something that will appeal to people and really advertise the Vodka.
3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?
The film 'Absent Presence' looks at the neurosis and paranoia around the issue of the terrorism, the consequential suspicion of foreign individuals. How after the terrorists attacks people have become more apprehensive about all people of certain cultures and religions. Focusing on the British Government new hard line policies on immigration and asylum seekers, Hussein Chalayan decided to propose a scenario depicting how they may create new measures for living in Britain.
This work shows evidence that it may have been influenced by the post-modernism's ‘pop art’ from the United States and Britain. Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.Early artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and a group called the "independant group" may have influenced Chalayan to explore and experiment with the different fields of art and design.
4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?
The important thing is that the artist had designed the piece, artists aren't always engineers or manufacturers, so sometimes help is required.
referencing:
http://vimeo.com/4187825
http://artnews.org/search.php
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/videos.2000.2000_a_w_afterwords/
