Inspired by life. A Timisoara- Berlin- Warsaw- Bucharest clothing collection

The cloths that are part of the Inspired by life. Timisoara-Berlin-Warsaw-Bucharest clothing collection are created, transformed and re-used starting from what is around us, in our everyday environment. We think of our environment, of the objects we come across, of the people we want to identify with, of our bodies in their most physical aspects, of the ways in which fashion and concepts of beauty are influencing us, etc in order to transform clothes into vehicles for ideas. By transforming clothing, the practical, everyday objects into concepts (reflecting the interactions we experience, the discussions we have, the texts we read, the ideas we exchange) and then transforming these concepts into practical, familiar, everyday objects – cloths – back again, we intend to realise once again that dichotomies between body and mind, “high” (art) concepts and everyday life, theory and practice need to be constantly demolished.

We use different practical methods to make visible the narratives that are informing the cloths and the raw materials that we use are of varied and multiple nature. We could mention here the actual physical objects such as clothing items that we transform or fabrics that we use to make new cloths. We could also mention actual events, facts, encounters and discussions that triggered the motivation for a certain piece and that informed its concept and its design. We could mention as well the theoretical texts (present in the collection in the form of the several quotations that we use) texts that are important for us in the understanding of our situation as persons, as women, as artists, as members of the society. These are texts that are exposing our present situation in the times of global capitalism as times when life has no value in relation to capital and texts that envision possibilities of resistance and of reclaiming life.

Inspired by life, although names itself a “collection” will not follow a certain formal line such as common compositional elements for the pieces, or a certain type of fabric, a certain colour scheme etc. that would give the different pieces a feeling of formal unity. Each piece that we do for the collection follows its own story, and we move from one piece to another, according to the ideas that we want them to become the bearers of. Some cloths are carrying quotations that are a direct reaction or response to the origin or “story” of that particular item that we are using or transforming. Other pieces are using the clothing as a somewhat neutral surface on which carbon copied images of our (already mediated) reality are exposed as constructed and are connected to quotations that are exposing and explaining the artificialness of the things depicted in this images even further (things taken for granted such as the “naturalness” of gender, for example, or the “normal” disconnectedness between the women working in a sweatshop and the women who get to wear the cloths). Other pieces have on them parts kept together by zippers, parts with texts of protest and revolt, in a society in which the possibilities of revolt are more and more normalised, limited, absorbed and policed, and in which protest, in order to be possible, often has to take the subtle forms of the quotidian. In this sense, the zippers are holding together different fragments of texts explaining different aspects of a multifaceted reality. Some pieces already took a form or we already know how to make them, some pieces will maybe remain only sketches and plans.

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www.moodboard4inspiredbylife.wordpress.com