Semester 2 Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

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?

Personally I do not see Chalayan work as just fashion or just art, because the outfits/ pieces of work he makes  borides on both sides, it almost blurs the lines and makes it hard to distinguish. But that is what makes his work so great! I was really surprised when I saw the dresses transform in the video below for ‘Afterword’s’. 

‘Burka’ is defiantly very thought provoking and controversial. It challenges the idea of modesty, identity and femininity. The burka is a piece of clothing that muslin women wear. In western culture it is seen as a symbol of oppression, as by covering the women’s face robs them of their identity.

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?

It depends, if the companies came up with the idea and just commissioned Chalayan to build the instillations then it’s not art. However if he was asked to/ and did design the instillation himself then yes, it is art, even if it is to sell a product. It could even help expand the artist’s name.

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?

Absent Presence is a video installation telling a story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. The film questions whether the extent to which identities can adapt to new environments.

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?

If it was made by the artist and only by them then you get a feeling of their work and their message sent just by themselves and not by someone else. I also believe that it’s more personal then as well, because is something they made themselves but they choose to share it with the word

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html 
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/

http://ilikecatsmorethanpeople.blogspot.com/2010/11/hussein-chalayan-burka-1996.html

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/