Out of the Closet
A working trip to Mexico
in 1997 deeply affected my art. I was struck by the Mexican
cultural views that the past coexists with the present and what appears
on the surface of events veils deeper meanings. In other words,
things are not as they seem. Also, I was captivated by the
Indigenous people’s celebration of their traditions and language
through their clothing. In my work since Mexico,
I have used clothing to explore a variety of historical, social,
religious, biological, and popular intellectual constructs about the
female body.
The dress functions as a metaphor for the female
body, and the fabric is its skin. Ideas of public and private
realms are examined in the processes of altering the original fabric of
the dress. Like the epidermal layer of the body, treatment can
range from burying the outer surface of the dress with many actions of
layering to penetrating the surface by piercing or burning imagery into
the skin exposing layers beneath. The veils of materials used
include pigments, oil, wax, dried vegetation, and lipstick.
These selected works come from the series
entitled Out of the Closet.
Among the issues about the female body investigated here were the
spiritual versus the corporeal, private versus public, mythological
versus historical, and popular versus canonical. The mixed
materials added to the fiber in both color and viscosity, resonate
ideas of vegetation, soil, milk, blood, tissue, and other organic
matter inspired by microscopic imaging. In some works, patterning
and color were directly inspired by historical art works of periods
illumined. Contemporary clothing is deliberately used because
like our inherited DNA which quietly controls cellular activity,
certain historical intellectual constructs continue to be planted deep
in our psyche owing to religious and social ethos. It is my hope
that by mining ideas from the past, we can liberate ourselves from
those that chain and vigorously embrace those that celebrate the awe
and beauty of womanhood.
The
Anne T. Kmieck Gallery