1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) andBurka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? AreAfterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?
- I believe that these works can both be considered art and fashion. I believe that because they can both be worn and both are different to your usual clothing. I think that the work "Burka" is very extreme because when you think of Burka, religion automatically comes to mind and the artist has shown two naked women wearing Burkas. The reason people wear Burkas for religion is to hide their skin and the artist has done the complete opposite in showing a naked women. This could also be very insulting to some people of that religion. On the other hand, the second work to me seems more as fashion because in the way in which the dress is presented on a model looking like woman but is also shot in a gallery like environment with white walls and windows. To me the difference between Art and Fashion is that art is usually something which is put up on a wall or shown somewhere and Fashion is clothing which is designed to be worn to show off the designers work.
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?
- The work does not impact Chalayan much, it is just a different style of work in which her audiences are not used to. Just because her work is being used to sell a product does not mean her work is not art it just is used for another company not for herself. If art is used to sell products then it still means its art, art can be anything and at the end of the day it is always designed by someone.
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?
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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?
- I beleive that it is important to personally make a piece of work because that is what it gives it a unique feel. Sometimes artists just design something and then get someone else to make it for them. This works sometimes but if and artist just designs a painting layout and the makes someone else paint it then it is going to look different to their other works because every artist has their own style of doing things and that is what makes artists different from each other.
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