An expansive performative practice: Fashion Fictions at the Vancouver Art Gallery
The practice of performance art touches a nerve that resonates back through history and then bounds forward, opening new possibilities for expression that combine philosophical ideas with bodily attire and the actions performed. Its ephemeral nature and inherent insights, accessible only when the body is in the presence of a viewer, promote the retention, and display, of the “costume” or documentation as art object. Examples are Joseph Beuys wrapping himself in felt and his subsequent edition of felt coats and the editioned photographs of Anna Mendieta’s performances in which she wore “clothing” of water, earth, or blood. Fashion Fictions at the Vancouver Art Gallery offers examples of innovative cohesion between design and meaning, art and the commonplace. Fashion as an art discipline is an expansive performative practice that defies hierarchical definitions. Often a result of an impetus that is both cooperative and competitive, fashion strives to leap ahead to the next modicum of public acceptance yet retain its distinctiveness. Artistic “mistakes” can be crucial, making or breaking an haute couture brand. The personal expression available through everyday fashion, in comparison, is without strictures and yet can also be an important part of art practice, as evidenced in Andy Warhol’s “look” or ORLAN’s plastic surgery.
The exhibition is divided into three sections. “Aesthetic Prophesies” presents fashion that uses traditional cultural dress adapted to contemporaneous contexts and speculation; “Material Futures” features technological and scientific innovations in materials research; and “Responsible Vision” investigates the ecological footprint of the fashion industry.
Opening “Aesthetic Prophesies,” Maiko Takeda undermines the boundaries of geometry and the sense of personal proximity with prickly hoods covered in small acetate quills that ruffle when worn, shifting the space that the garmented body visually occupies. Although Takeda was inspired by the idea of wearing a cloud, the hoods contain a mysterious unknowable sublime, a terrible beauty, or the more concrete menace of a sea urchin or porcupine.
The concept of the fashion show is diverted in the layout of the exhibition, in which androgynous black, white, and grey mannequins are mounted on the walls. The curatorial decision to include corporate fashion items with an unidentified designer – as in the glassed-in display of runners – raises the weary question “What is art?” As if in response, in the next gallery, commercial-brand (Comme des Garçons) puffer coats are significantly raised from the utilitarian (some don’t even have arm holes) as Rei Kawakubo swathes models in flattering folds and tucks and then inserts a bulbous felt dress.
In the portrait of the Anishinaabeg living matriarchal lineage of Caroline Monnet’s family, the women are beautifully clothed in garments fringed, intricately cut away, caped, and regal, based on traditional designs and made primarily of recycled materials. Celeste Pedri-Spade’s ribbon skirt and black top and headdress, Anti Pipeline Society Kwe (2019), refers to her Anishinaabeg way of knowing and to Indigenous Futurism. The video accompanying Whale Transformation Dress (2022) by Himikalas Pamela Baker shows the metamorphosis from animal to human originating from her Kwakwaka’wakw culture. As a member of the culture, she is permitted to use the embodied spiritual story.
In the second section, the new materials and digital imaging technologies used in British fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen’s final runway collection, Natural Dis-tinction, Un-natural Selections (2009), result in fashions that defy the natural contours of the body yet enhance and beautify the figure. From a more plebeian realm, the Dutch designer Suzanne Oude Hengel displays the process that started with the cottage craft of knitting and was adapted into sneaker designs that have been adopted by Timberland, Rothy’s, and On Running. Evidence of a more fanciful, exorbitant, visual practice is seen in the space-age outfit designed by Adrian Stimson, Bumble Bee Regalia (2021), drawing on his experience as a beekeeper. Nearby, a video shows Scarlett Yang’s Swarm Ware Recursive Materiality (year?), demonstrating a technology that imitates insects swarming with a robotic installation that produces biomaterial.
The exhibition’s third section is epitomized in Swedish designer Stina Radestad’s 2022 collection Discarce. Radestad uses unravelled materials; blindfolded and gloved so that she can’t discern which threads she is combining, she enables unexpected designs and forms to emerge.
Fashion as streetwear carries socio-political inferences – rags to riches, uniforms to leisure wear, gender specific or unisex – and popular uptakes of branding overflow into trending influences. Art that has a determined intent can reflect an exploration of concepts outside of the commonplace. Fashion as art requires sufficient dedication to concept to enable a dialogue between the two to take place. Often motivated by business, fashion as a discipline within a fine-arts context can be nebulous. Of late, major museums have hosted exhibitions of name-recognition designers whose names serve as a legible invitation to attract new visitors, an admirable aim. With Fashion Fictions, curator Stephanie Rebick leaves little doubt that fashion can be a rich art discipline.
