Opportunity Shop Installation

This system of garment fragments proposes new potentialities for the garment, as an object to use and interpret, as remnants of existing garments are reconsidered into new parts to make new wholes.  Collage has a history of being deployed as a protest against the commodity.  In this project, the material resonance and history of these garments, collected from rural and urban mid-western thrift shops, is reconfigured into a new narrative. From the nostalgic materials a new language of dress emerges that still engages with the layers of information previously present in the cloth garments. The disassembly of men’s work clothes and their reassembly into female garment fragments, along with another reassembly by the participant, create a continuously shifting story though these materials.

The garment becomes art when it becomes a device to facilitate new experiences outside of fashion spectacle and functionality.  In my system, the pieces endlessly interchange and attach, and parts from garments that have previously established roles, (cuffs, collars, and plackets), take on new functions as extensions and decoration. Different material identities merge to create composite identities.  Every time the viewer’s focus shifts, the system yields another garment.