Event Blog #3

“Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem” at the Fowler

Conveniently, this exhibition was also at the Fowler, so I was able to attend it on the same day I saw “Singular Spaces.” “Making Strange” consists of a number of dresses that artist Vivan Sundaram created using extraordinarily random, original, recycled materials. When I first walked into the dark exhibition room, I read the description and was intrigued when it said that Sundaram essentially wanted to poke fun at the uptight world of high fashion when he created these works. I really like the fact that Sundaram used recycled items that ranged from the mundane such as industrial tubing or strange such as tampons.

This piece uses wire mesh to make a hooded outfit. It makes me think of both a medieval knight in chain mail (because of the shiny wire mesh) and a veil that a Muslim woman would wear (because of its low hanging hood). It takes a very creative artist to juxtapose those differing cultures together into one piece.

The next piece that caught my eye was the thin white jumpsuit that was adorned with pills. I noticed that the combinations of pills in each pouch were pretty much symmetrical across the centerline of the outfit. It made me wonder what kind of thought process Sundaram went through as he chose the placement of each pill because it did not seem arbitrary and did seem to have flow throughout the piece.

Overall, I think that “Making Strange” is a perfect event for this class because the materials that the artist used are from practical, everyday use (and some were from engineering applications), but they were put together in such a way to create art.