Week 2 - Hussein Chalayan

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

- Twice awarded Designer of the Year, UK native Hussein-Chalayan doesn’t have the typical background you’d come to expect of a fashion designer. In fact, he’s a tech geek who’s translated his knowledge into fashion and that certainly comes across in his unique designs.
It’s probably pretty clear that the innovative designers unique fashion items span both worlds; not only are they fashion, they are furniture too! The idea of Chalayan’s “Afterwords” exhibit which features the wearable, portable architecture, is that fashion-forward designs can be found anywhere at anytime. Take the chair covers that are transformed into modern dresses, or the cutting-edge table that also doubles as a skirt.
In Burka he shows a social conscience absent elsewhere in the fashion industry: Naked models wearing dresses based on the traditional Islamic chador, as a comment on the treatment of women in Muslim societies.

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?

- Hussein Chalayan has teamed up with level vodka to produce in his installation. 'The level tunnel' is a 15m long, 5m high installation that can be experienced from the exterior or blindfolded on the inside. Chalayan has developed an experience of the senses, working with a number of different materials as well as playing with scent, touch and sound. The viewing is blindfolded and led into the installation, where they are confronted with sound created by a flute made from a vodka bottle. Further on, a breeze carries the scent of lemon and cedar as the visitors moves along the leather coated railings. a heart monitor is fitted onto the visitor and a display on the outside projects their heartbeat to external viewers. Repose is art installation comprised of two elements that communicate with each other. An airplane wing is suspended from a wall, its large wing flap moving slowly up and down to reveal a long strip of Swarovski crystals, illuminated from behind by LEDs. This graceful movement is linked to the other moving part of the installation - a digital clock made of precision cut bespoke Swarovski crystal is set on a timed loop indicating speed with the movement of the wing flap. The installation simultaneously encompasses the feelings of movement, stillness and the disembodied experience of flight. Hussein Chalayan is an internationally-regarded fashion designer renowned for his innovative use of materials, meticulous pattern cutting and progressive attitude to new technology.
(http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/page/202/)
(http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/36556)

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?

- The Absent Presence, is an enigmatic story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. Chalayan opens the argument on how certain identities can or cannot adapt to new environments and generates a research based narration for his cross-disciplined installation with filmic images and sculptures. There is a serious research behind the end product displaying the interplay of the real and the imagined with a series of collected clothes and deformed crystallized garments. A DNA extraction process from the clothes collected from unknown people, an anthropological evaluation, and a 3 D manipulation all treated through the London sound-scape as the environment reveals the approach of Chalayan to the dilemma of identity.
(http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/2032)

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?

- Very important is the Artist personally made his pieces, because hi gives part of himself.