Made in Evil

Artist Statement

Art to Wear- Medieval Suit of Armor

            The link between masculinity and femininity is a recurring theme in the majority of my artwork from sculptures, photography, to paintings that I have produced in the last couple of years. This theme challenges me to play with the frills and delicateness of the woman and the hard, edgy, and sharp aspects of a man’s wardrobe. Collectively as a group, we decided upon creating our own interpretations of the various male warriors from different time periods. As a unified collection, we created structural garments with three-dimensional gradating plane transitions from a large scale to a smaller scale.  The femininity in my knight inspired garment is notable on the chest area of the bust where I created rhythm by subtracting the negative space of a print I created that was inspired by the chainmail links on a knight’s facemask. Chainmail links are a representation of a man’s masculinity because of its metallic form with refined edges. This masculinity is transformed into a lace-like texture that creates a suggestion of femininity.

            The symmetrical form of my garment is concurrent in our collection, forming an overall unified design. One structural element that is apparent in my garment is the balance in weight amongst the shoulders and the hips sections because the masses of the architectural structures are proportionate to each other. On the shoulders are implied polyhedral structures that resemble the shoulder armor on a medieval suit. This metal accent creates a warm feminine design by adding gold decorative paper that mimics the same lacing technique that I had manually created for the chest area. In contrast with the shoulders, the hips feel more masculine because of the thick matte black foam core. This was used to create serial plane, which were scored to follow the form of the hips. Beneath the gradating structure on the hips are randomly ordered pieces of black paper with a minimal use of the gold decorative paper, creating a tactile look that interplays with both masculine and feminine materials. Overall, the combinations of masculine and feminine materials create synergy and without these components, my theme would not be evident.