Week 2 - Hussein Chalayan
Hussein Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.
1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?
Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996
Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000
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?
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?
Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)
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?
Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) are challenging to both the viewer and the wearer in the way that Burka (1996) try to make viewer and wearer think are they comfortable?. I think his work Burka (1996) the ideas are based on sexual, freedom and comfortable. These works made me think about our society and religions. I am asking myself is there any rules or regulations. Can we know what actually right or actually wrong. In the way Burka dress, they think it's liberty for them to separate from sexual harassment but i think it's showing more bound themselves in unrealistic world. The Afterwords (2000) is fashion because the work plays more around with clothing design more the look of the work rather than focus with the idea or conception of the work.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what makes fashion fashion but I think fashion is more play around with how it looks, what we like and psychological of our desire like what we want or want we like than conceptual.
Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art? I think the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products because the meaning depend on customer not author because the author is dead. In my point of view i think it's still even it changed to products because the work still has the idea deep behind it.
3. For the third question i think of Giacomo Balla his painting is like moving image. I think he thought at that time about we are in postmodernism and globalization which we could contact and communicate with other easier and our identity kind a more less important. Thus, he tried to make the identity have more value because we all look the same human aspect and we can only know identity ourselves. I think this is what inspired him to do this work.
4. I don't know but i think if the artists personally made the pieces by themselves, it's more good reputation than two artists. However, Two artists don't mean that the work have no good reputation either but if only one artist personally made the piece, the piece more relation to the artist. Finally, i think it's not important that the artist personally made the piece by him/herself.
The work will get more interesting if two artists or more than that working together.
Hi. Arkawat
ReplyDelete'what makes fashion fashion' that question was difficult to define but I like your description of it, personally fashion seems to be around us how it looks and what it changes as you said. It is more important aspects of fashion. Yet, Burka is likely to be nothing,, just saying that I am unsure it is made up by artist? or by only model standing up. This piece raises weird questions as it is weird. I agree with that the work is based on the sexual issues. Do you agree with Burka is surely not a fashion? Haha Contrastingly, t Afterwords is gorgeous it is amazing to combine table and fashion.