On My Radar: Pinar Yolacan, Dress Codes @ ICP
If you haven’t yet had a chance to check out Dress Codes at ICP, please make the time. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on seeing this image in person:
Yes, that is a woman wearing an embellishment made of meat. Pinar Yolacan‘s photography featuring Brazilian ladies wearing meat dresses is a “must experience this in person” series.
Pinar, who lives and works in Brooklyn, visited the island of Itaparica off the coast of Brazil in 2007. She invited a number of local Afro-Brazilian women to pose for her and then, working from Polaroids taken during their first meeting, designed garments for them to model. Her creations are loosely based on historical Portuguese fashions and assembled from animal products and luxurious velvet and satin fabrics from local markets, the heavy garments lend an air of gravity to the images.
According to Big Shiny Thing, Yolacan is known as the ‘the tripe artist’ and in 2005 presented her first solo exhibitionin New York City at Rivington Arms. The exhibition consisted of 19 subjects, whom she found on craigslist. All of the subjects were white and between the ages of 50 and 70. Based on the kinds of personality traits their looks conveyed to her in the Polaroids, she designed a meat garment that each would wear for the second shoot.
Yolacan sees a kind of ‘otherness’ (her term) in these women of a certain age and class that she magnifies in their garments made out of tripe, cow stomach, chicken skin and lamb testicles. The outfits convey the Victorian elegance that Yolacan perceived in such women during her first experiences of Western European life in the UK. (via BigShinyThing)
I interpreted Pinar’s Dress Codes work as a statement on economic contradictions, class and the definition of fashion. Some of the designs are so striking that you almost forget they are made of raw animal intestines. I just hope PETA doesn’t find out about this!
Dress Codes is ICP’s third triennial of photography and video.
About
The Triennial is ICP’s signature exhibition: a global survey of the most exciting and challenging new work in photography and video. The only recurring U.S. exhibition specializing in international contemporary photography and video, the Third Triennial will mark the closing cycle of ICP’s 2009 Year of Fashion, a series of projects that critically examine fashion and its relationship to art and other cultural and social phenomena. Through the lens of fashion—in its broadest conception—the Triennial will look at the proliferation of photo- and video-based work exploring the uses of style, image, and personal presentation.
The theme of fashion encompasses a diverse range of practices and ideas, including explorations of identity and affiliation; the production, distribution, and consumption of images and goods; contemporaneity; age; gender; and global industry. The themes of the Triennial express the exuberance, wit, and astute social observation taking place within contemporary image-making. These artists variously explore fashion—whether in everyday dress, haute couture, street fashion, or uniforms—as a celebration of individuality, personal identity, and self-expression, and as cultural, religious, social, and political statements. (via icp.org)