-
- I am a first year student at Parsons and doing this work for class not a company. My major is fashion design.
-
- This sculpture was the shift project of the studio class, and it was my final project for 2016 fall semester.
-
- In this project, I focused on the dressmaking at home in the 18th century,
-
- garment industry in the 19th century,
-
- immigrants’ history,
-
- and women’s rights.
-
- At the beginning of the project, I went to the Tenement Museum to search about immigrants’ history.
-
- In the Tenement Museum, I heard an interesting story of a woman of the first generation of the immigrants. Her name was Nathalie Gumpertz, and she was a Jew from Germany. One day, her husband, Julius Gumperts, disappeared without any trace, and she started to do dressmaking in her apartment as her start-up business for her four children and herself.
-
- This is her account note. Her business was successful. However, her could not own her property because she was a married woman. All property had to belong to men at that time. Even though her husband disappeared.
-
- She started to fight her right. Eventually, she won the court. This is a paper from her court case which shows the property will belong to her.
-
- I captured the unfair situation and a woman struggling against it. I wrote the text from Nathalie’s account book and the paper from her court case on the platform.
-
- The sculpture is standing on the platform. The tangled thread is three overlapping layers and connecting the sculpture and the platform.
-
- The three layers connote the 18, 19, and 20th century because women’s rights have improved over three centuries. It also symbolizes women being oppressed in unfair circumstances.
-
- The broken arm implies the limited women’s rights as well. But it seems to have grown up little by little.
-
- I made this sculpture by hands. I used clay, wood, thread, spools, and fabric.
-
- Their tone-down white and ivory color and rough texture convey the atmosphere in the 18th century. I used this tone and texture to show that the immigrants of the period had to live a poor and shabby life.
-
- These are my sketches of the idea.
-
- This is my mood board for this project.
-
- A professional photographer at Parsons took the photos of this piece for my project.
-
- Based on the research and pictures, I made catalog as well.
