Inspiration:
For this project, my first reason for choosing the theme of the death of the corset was because of the gender inequality we still have. It is true that we, women, have gained a better role and opportunity in society but now we are fighting for the inclusion of all womanhood and that is what the third wave of feminism is about. After spending half of the semester in my ESL class analyzing the “We Can Do It” poster from 1940 and compare it with redesigned illustration used as the cover of “The New Yorker Magazine” on February 6, 2017, it made me understand and being more aware of what is being feminist and the importance of being a feminist now.
Moreover, when I went to the Whitney Biennial Exhibition I didn’t found any piece which relates directly to my work or theme but I found some conceptual inspiration for the design and the making of my piece. Particularly, the piece from Raul de Nieves, a Mexican artist, which focus on the idea of the death as an open door for rebirth and to another life. His meticulous use of materials and combination of them is what makes his piece unique. The use of beads, textiles and different colors make the viewer approach easily and have a feeling of what is the Mexican Culture. The use of the literary figures in his work, such as the methaphor, is what helped me to convey the idea of male oppression through the corset. In this way, I came up with the idea of creating a birdcage for the lower part as a metaphor for men repressing the body of women and their freedom. In this way, men are represented by the cage and the bird is the woman, particularly her reproductive part which was seriously affected by the corset.
Lectures and Exhibitions:
The lectures and exhibitions that I went were directly tied and related to my theme. The lecture named “Anonymous No More: Recovering women from the past to change our Future” was led by panelists such as Ammy Emmerich from Refinery 29, Nell Merlino, among others. It focused on the theme about the role that women have now in society and the issues we still have as women. One of the ideas that caught my attention was when Nell Merlino claimed that most girls follow celebrities and fashion pages on Instagram and Twitter because that is the only field in which women are portrayed the most. By making this statement, she portrays the role of fashion in society as superficial matter, but I believe it depends on how you take it, for what and in what context.
Also, I went to “I will What I Want: Women, Design and Empowerment” exhibition at the New School of Design. The exhibition focused on the history of women from the mid-20th century and how their roles have been shaped and impacted by design in a positive and negative way. More precisely, exhibiting design objects that made easier embrace womanhood, like the breast, pumps to facilitate nutrition for mothers, tampons for all women that menstruate and a the LifeWrap NASG that was created to save the life of women who give birth at home to get to the hospital alive.
Finally, the last exhibition that I attend was “Intimate to Infinite: Parsons Festival 2017, BFA Integrated Design’s Capstone”. The piece that particularly relates to my project was the work by Tanya Alessandra Salami, which was about bras analyzing its function and visual appeal. For this reason, Salami focused on the fact that the average woman in the United States is a 36C cup, meaning that they have to make a decision between functionality or visual appeal, as she claimed that functional bras aren’t sexy, and sexy bras aren’t functional.
Primary Sources:
As primary sources for my research paper for my Seminar class, I went to fashion stores looking for the redesigned corsets which are now in vogue. For this reason, I went to Zara, which is a fashion store based on fast fashion meaning that each week they have new garments and collection in the store. There, I found several corset body belts which helped me in the semiotic analyses for my paper.
Studio Piece:
Meaning: The meaning of my piece is to represent with the corset the male domination of women. However, considering that now corsets are fashionable and even became a feminist statement, I aimed to make it fashionable, appealing to aesthetics but conveying the idea of representing it as a painful and danger piece of clothing.
Process and materials:
In the making of the piece, I create some sketches to set the design for the corset. When I had the final design, I started making each part of the corset separately. In this way, it was easy to create each part and then putting them together to the use of the glue gun. Basically, for the entire corset, I use aluminum foil to create a metal look to it, as metal symbolizes stillness and constriction. For the lower part of the corset, I altered the design of a regular corset so that I could be able to create the metaphor of the birdcage. I had to use my own old school notes to create a shape and use wire in order that shape stays. I consider the use of the school notes under the aluminum also as a metaphor of how women couldn’t being able to study and being professional because of the male authority. Moreover, after presenting it to the class, I found that many classmates found the lower part similarly to a royal crown. That likeness was not intentional, but I am glad about the result of it because the use of the corset was empowered by the royalty. For the waist part, I decided to include some giggling eyes to represent the meaning that corsets were used in order to make the waist thinner so that it can create a more voluptous breast and hips. The push pins, which are located also in each of the lines that create the birdcage, are pointing towards the eyes as a symbolism of how corsets by pleasing only males eyes, had serious consequences for women, even dead. The use of materials such as push pins, safety pins, wire, aluminum foil, glue gun, and spikes was meticulous thought in order that it can represent the idea of repression, pain, and danger.
