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Clothed System

For Clothed System, I sewed myself three shirts, two pairs of pants, and a dress from secondhand linen tablecloths and then wore the clothes continuously until they wore out. I also made a set of two wooden hooks where the clothes lived when they were not on my body or in the wash. During the two months I wore the clothes, they were installed both in my bedroom and in the Bachelor of Arts Exhibition at Grinnell College. The piece changed every day as I had to change out the clothes to get dressed and do my laundry. After 65 days, the clothes were rags, and I made them into paper. I made each sheet of paper so that it has a hole the exact size of the wooden hooks and can hang on the hooks as the clothes had while I was wearing them. I have no interest in using the paper for writing or drawing, but rather in keeping it in this form: a sculpture that will preserve both a history of and potential for use.  

Clothed System, 2018. secondhand linen tablecloths, thread, wood, all of artist's time spent clothed for 65 days. Installed in artist's bedroom, the place where she usually gets dressed.

Over (Again)

Over (Again) is an attempt to work through what happens when something is gone and the records of it are not adequate, and never will be. 

 

Since I made the clothes into paper, I don’t have any evidence of them in that state or of any of the process of their construction or transformation into paper other than documentation I took at the time. The entire process of making the clothes, wearing them, and making them into paper was overwhelming, and throughout I wished that I could do every part again better. The whole project was made out of doing things again, but eventually each step of the process reached an end and led directly into the next--I could never go back. In this video, I am thinking about documentation as a medium through which to discuss concepts running parallel to the project of making my clothes into paper itself.

Process Photos

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