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?

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

I find these works very thought provoking. For example a burka is normally a full body garment worn in such countries as Afghanistan by women for cultural reasons. It’s meant to protect women from unnecessary attention to their bodies from men. I also find Chalayan’s work challenging because I’m not used to seeing a burka worn in this way. It still manages to hide all the women’s identities like burkas are intended to do but modesty which comes with wearing a burka is taken away with the different lengths of burkas Chalayan has created. In a way Chalayan has sexualized the burka.

I think Chalayan’s work is more art than fashion because it is thought provoking like good art is and I can’t imagine any of his burkas coming into fashion any time soon or anyone wearing them.

Other works of Chalayans like Afterwords (2000) is also very much the same as designboom says it looks like “wearable architecture”, which to me makes his designs more art than fashion because its not the type of clothing you would seen worn around town.

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

I believe like Fashion and Art sums up fashion is something that follows and echoes the trends of the art of its time. Fashion is constantly changing to follow the seasons and the latest trends that are set by popular culture and influential designers.

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, The Level Tunnel (2006)

I think this impacts the nature of Chalayan’s work because his work becomes more of collaboration because other people’s opinions and ideas are involved when deciding on the designs and final outcome of his work. His work becomes less about his personal response to art and it’s more of a response to someone else’s ideas. I don’t think the meaning of art changes because art is used all the time to sell products but I think it can be better described as design than art. It might change in the respect that it used to sell you a product other than a idea which is popular at that time.

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. movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approached?

Still images from Chalayan's film, Absent Presence  (2005)

 I think you can see the influences of industrialism in Chalayan’s work because his fashion is mechanized and it depicts power, strength and energy. Science and reason is also relevant in his work because of the technology used behind Chalayan’s  film Absent Presence which makes the work seem very fantastical. I also think the social status of the artist is also relevant in his work because the work is very innovative with its intellectual ability. Lastly I think humanism because of the system of thought that is behind the work which uses DNA (this shows a system of thought which considers human beings).


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?

Chalayan's Echoform, (1999-2000)

 

I believe it is important that the artist or designer credited for the work has come up with the ideas behind the work but I don’t believe it’s that important anymore for the artist to have personally made the work. Artists have been known even in the period of the Renaissance not to have made all their work as they have had workshops and apprentices to help produce art for them. I think just as long as people know that the artists have had some help in producing their work then it should be fine. If artists and designers didn’t have extra help sometimes in making their work then a lot of the artwork which is highly considered and sort after wouldn’t be around today.

Reference List

Designboom. (2009). Hussein Chalayan at the design museum. http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/5209/hussein-chalayan-at-the-design-museum.html

Fashion and art. http://tirocchi.stg.brown.edu/514/story/fashion_art.html