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Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator features artwork by international
artists, designers, and collaborative teams that investigates clothing as an expression
and fulfi llment of human needs and desires. Going beyond the everyday
utility of clothing, the artists in the exhibition use clothing, fabric, and the body
to invent new forms of communication and interaction between wearers, between
wearers and their clothes, and between the makers of clothing and the fashion
system. The exhibition is organized in six thematic categories that address how
clothing and our relationship to it far exceed the traditional idea of providing
shelter. The categories—The Everyman, Multi-Tasking, Container/Contained,
(Un)Clothed, Construction/Creation, and Identity—speak to how clothing shapes,
covers, and sometimes even undoes us.
The universality and versatility of clothing make it an apt form for artists to use
in their investigations of the icon of The Everyman. This category includes Joseph
Beuys’s Felt Suit (1970), which references his simple approach to life and the
poetic resonance materials can hold for people. In Girl/Boy (1998) the British/
Nigerian artist, Yinka Shonibare, uses the complex history of fabrics to map the
relationships created by colonial and gender systems in Africa and Europe.
The works in Multi-Tasking put clothing to uses beyond their normal function,
pushing them to serve multiple and disassociated activities. In the work SUITS:
The Clothes Make the Man (1998), for example, The Art Guys (with designer Todd
Oldham), subverted the high price of designer logos by charging corporations to
advertise on the suits they wore to public events for one year.
The artists included in the category, Container/Contained, experiment with the
nature, confi guration, and material of containers that allow access to their contents
in many ways. Mimi Smith’s Camouglage Maternity Dress (2004) embraces and
exposes the paradoxical dualities of inside/outside and seen/unseen. By fashioning
her maternity dress out of camoufl age material and allowing visual access to
the pregnant belly, Smith calls attention to the quixotic nature of the regulation of
private behavior and to the visibility/invisibility of the mother fi gure in our culture.
The struggle between innocence and guilt, chastity and titillation, exposure
and concealment is the central subject of the works in the category (Un)Clothed.
Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1965) probes the relationship between clothing and human
vulnerability. Alba D’Urbano’s The Immortal Tailor (1995-97) has it both ways by
revealing the underlying body on the surface of his (her?) clothing.
Deconstructed and self-referential, the garments in the category Construction/
Creation share the condition of being about their own making. Issey Miyake’s
Green Baguette A-POC (2003) actually puts the design decisions in the users’
hands. By creating a fabric that resists fraying and providing the space and tools
to custom fi t the clothing, Miyake turns the design process upside down and celebrates
the newly empowered consumer.
The imagination and assertion of identity is a theme well served by the visible
and legible expression of clothing. In the category Identity, artists go beyond
choices of color or accessories, engineering ways that clothing can be used to
communicate the personal and social characteristics that construct identity.
In I AM _______ (2003), Mike Arauz collaborates with participants to produce
T-shirts that declare one’s identity. Cat Chow’s Measure for Measure (2003) addresses
the myriad roles, restrictions, and rules that dominate our lives.
The Weisman’s presentation of Pattern Language will feature a number of
programs that draw on the timely, relevant issues and ideas raised by the works in
the exhibition. From an artist’s panel discussion moderated by the exhibition curator,
Judith Hoos Fox, to a student fashion design competition judged by an artist
included in the exhibition, Pattern Language at the Weisman promises to
be challenging, pertinent, and fun.
Pattern Language was organized by Tufts University Art Gallery, Judith Hoos
Fox, guest curator. Local support has been generously provided by Target.
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