Event 1: Fowler Museum

I had never been to either fowler museum or hammer museum before even though I already studied here for four years and they are just around me, but thanks to our class, which requires us to visit them so that I would not regret for missing such wonderful places. After surviving all my midterms last week, finally, I took my adventure to fowler museum.

The museum is really bigger inside than what I thought before, especially when I found out such a large amount of exhibits there. “Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem” is the exhibition most attractive to me. It consists of two parts and both of them not only have strong visual impact from aesthetic effect but also involve the expansions of their meaning. The Gagawaka consists of various wearable, sculptural garments made from recycled materials and medical supplies. The idea of combining daily materials and fashion art just corresponds to the theme of our class, the study and analysis of relationship and connection of different subjects with art. The garments are made of materials such as sanitary napkins, respirators, rubber, plastic pipes or even bras.

The immediate inspiration for me from these garments origins from the most basic aspect: the recycling usage of daily materials reminds me of its advantage of “turning waste to wealth” and its realistic meaning in today’s environmental friendly trend. As Vivan Sundaram speaks, “Fashion is a commodity, but these are sculptural garments, so they cannot be commodified in the same way. They were produced to be looked at—and maybe to be worn once in a while. They maintain a tension between art and design, evoking multidisciplinary elements that are central to my practice.”(Zehra) I think whatever if the artist himself has the aspiration or not, his sculptural garments can exhibit as a conceptual lead to people’s notion of environmental recycling. I remembered in last several world cups, sports equipment companies like Nike had already developed and manufactured jersey or even footwear for athletes made from plastic bottles. First, those collected “plastic bottles are cleaned and shredded into pieces.” Then, these “bits are melted to become strands of polyester.” After that, “the polyester thread is woven into premium fabric for high performance apparel.”(Nike.com) The jerseys made up from plastic bottles are not only a great save of resources but also cheap, beautiful, light and comfortable. This is one of the realistic examples of combination of art and recycling technology.

More deeply, “while Gagawaka was seductive and quirky, Postmortem is decidedly macabre, but promises to be equally thought-provoking.”(Nidhi) The part postmortem comprises of mannequins tailors’ dummies, anatomical models, and wooden props used to present the human body on a more disquieting stage. This kind of artistic expression naturally leads me to our topic of medical science and art. The combination of it and the former part let the audience to think about how to draw line between real and artificial in a consumerist world. The mannequin is structurally available to being chopped up. One can play with hands and arms. As Sundaram says: “I explore themes of death and destruction, transforming these objects from inanimate to sculptural,” In this process of "opening up the body", he also humanizes the mannequins — seeing them re-configured in this manner invites, even compels, one to relate to them. (Nidhi) All of these deep and inspiring ideas through the expression of art combining with medical anatomy make me fascinated.

Reference:

Jumabhoy, Zehra. "Artforum." Vivan Sundaram. 20 Dec. 2011. Web. <http://artforum.com/words/id=29889>.

"FROM PLASTIC TO PERFORMANCE." Nike Better World. Web.

<http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/better-world/recycled/innovation>.

Gupta, Nidhi. "Split Wide Open: Vivan Sundaram Takes Back the Body." The Sunday Guardian. 2 Nov. 2013. Web.

<http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/split-wide-open-vivan-sundaram-takes-back-the-body>.