Cycle in Heels : Epiphanies

by Simona Zemaityte

I created this dress with Yueer Zhang for the opening night of Epiphanies at the Saint Pancras Hospital gallery.

Kali by John William

EPIPHANIES! will explore a range of different sources of Outsider Art, using case history text to explore the dynamics of each artist. The exhibition will be a wonderful insight into this fascinating world, bringing together up to 20 local and international Outsider Artists. Many of the artists will be presenting work for the first time in London and there will be participation from art groups linked to the Camden and Islington Foundation Trust such as Isledon Road Creativity Centre, which encourages creative practice amongst its residents with mental health issues.

I hardly ever wear black... but it's ok if you add some dolls head on it.

“If you hang out with us, you may experience epiphanies, revelations and visions. Visit us and you might burst into art, aflame with colour, exaltation and obsessive creativity. We are Outsider Artists, working far beyond the margins of the conventional art world. Untutored, obsessive, producing art for our own pleasure and therapy, inventing techniques, scavenging for unexpected materials, we are united in our need to express beliefs, angst, political and spiritual views, through art. View our passionate work and you may experience a strong urge to begin making art by any means possible. The streets are full of seductive rubbish. Inspiration is everywhere. Anyone can make art of anything! We are Outsider Artists. We will change your life.” Sue Kreitzman

My group exhibitions are like Disneyland for very peculiar adults. Magic, ritual, strange humor, private mythologies: all of this makes Outsider Art almost unbearably exciting, both in the making and the viewing. It's the passion that really puts it over the top. I will never tired of it.

This piece could be between the installation and the interactive site-specific performance, something that people attend without knowing they are going to see a performance, in the frame of my research on performing in non-theatrical space.

At the beginning Yueer created a path is created with the barbies dolls and the audience is free to touch the barbies, to change their places.

Then I enter dressed quite simply, and pick up slowly the barbies, like in Tom Thumb story with little stones. Then I enter the room and discover and Yueer bring the dress on the mannequin hidden behind the door.

Yueer helped me to get dressed in a kind of ritualistic process.I like staging the dressing and not hide to get change (so you have to work out how you can superpose the different outfits).

Some spaces were left on the skirt of the dress and in order to attach some of the barbies I found on my way directly on the dress to compete the master piece during the performance. Then I went around the gallery merging the exhibition becoming a kind of "live piece of art".

The piece has to deal with childhood and the acceptation of the individuality through creative process. The girl find those abandoned Barbie but feel to old to play with them anymore. Then she discovers the barbie dress, triggering a kind of "aesthetic epiphany". She realises that even if she can't play with barbies she can wear them and it's the way she can find and express her true-self and her individuality -by becoming a live piece of art".

the tragic condition of the performer: you can't get through the door with a crinoline barbie dress

For me it's, the perfect weeding dress, if Chanel were designing something with barbie it would be like this!

Sue about outsiders artist: "their work is idiosyncratic, bold and arresting, rarely pretty or twee.

Outsiders artists have no interest in the established art world, little or no formal training, yet are driven to make art. This art is a compulsion, a reaction, a statement, and as necessary to existence as breathing or eating? "

I think the return back of the dress was also part of the performance, the only way it's transportable it's to wear the skirt so had to go from camden to my house walking in the street of London, made quite an impression....

by Simona Zemaityte

my friend Jerome who works in a charity shop told me "I'm seeing less and less dolls coming in the donations", dolls are a toys who tend to disappear, now children are playing with screen even when they are really young".

With the golden sprayed metal boning, the skirt can also be seen as a golden cage

The barbie dress is not only a costume but an installation on its own

Suddently I wanted to do the dishes and Simona took this picture "It's so funny to see you doing the dishes in this costume"

It's not because you wear a barbie dress that you can't do the dishes..whatever you do, do it with style!

At the beginning, of september, I met Sue for a coffee in Spitafield market and she gave me 5 necklaces to customise.

You understand, theses necklaces are nice but a bit boring…a "normal" person would have find them already over the top, so do whatever you want with them...

Me: be if I make something awful?

- "you can't make something awful".

by Simona Zemaityte

When I finished to work on the necklaces, Sue invited me and my friend Simona to come over for lunch welcoming us in a gorgeous pink Kimono made by Laura Shanley.

But for trying the necklace" well i'm going to change because pink and red are not a really good combination". Sue is wild in her art, but she have a gift to match colour together.

This one is the can can and marge simpson legs but in green/blue had to find the perfect colour matching with the pearl and complementarity paint the shoes in red like the stone which look like coral.

This one is Jivaro's shrunken head inspired, with the altering of white and tanned barbie, I had bindies on the forehead and I made this jewels head piece jewels (putting the pearl one by one)

You have to become a barbie hairdresser and cut barbie hear by yourself, which is really enjoyable because it's the kind of thing you are not allowed to do as a child.

For this one, I played with complementarity of the red and the black, all the beads are black and only one red, I questioned this statement, it's like on a theatre stage which works as a system of sign, the difference become significant, so play on this "significant anomaly"

I applied the "droste effect", you have to make necklaces for barbies who are already on a necklaces.

The blacks beads make some kind of rustle skirts.

You have to take care of barbie and at the same time transform her to make you yours, do her earrings, her rings, her nails, and even her lipstick (I put black nail polish on barbies lips to make her more "gothic")

I also play with complementarity with this one, painting barbies legs and arms in red and black, altering them, and painting the shoes and the bracelets with opposite colours to create a kind of negative version.

"En rouge et Noir, j'exilerai ma peur"

Sue embodies Oscar Wild concept One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."

working in Sue's workshop

Sue "Now I draw, paint, and assemble (huge complex assemblages) female goddesses and entities, studded with glitter, baubles and profound detritus. And I collect. oh, how I collect! Found objects. Broken and abandoned stuff? Hopelessly damaged and aged dolls, mannequins and heads. Discarded jewellery. Pavement treasures and pound shop prizes. All this glory gets incorporated into my baroque and over the top sculptures and paintings.

"I now eat, breathe and dream art. i wear it.

I firmly believe that anyone can make art of anything and I love it when people catch the "art virus" from me.

This one is the more "simple" - Sue: "if one day I have i'm invited to take the tea with the Queen, I will put on this one (if this ever happen! (i'm sure it will!) I put 6 barbies arms,

2 really white, 2 tanned and 2 blacks barbies that make a kind of "united colour of Benetton" necklace". I've seen an article that they was a scandal in Walmart supermarket because the black one was sold half price because, she was selling less. But for me, they are more pricy because more difficult to find, my favourite barbie where Pochantas and Jasmine the blond one where just the "pretty" friend but Pochantas was the one with personality.

"You are literary pulling my leg"

Sue has been part of the amazing documentary "Fabulous Fashionistas"

Without botox or plastic surgery, these women are redefining old age, in style. Not one of them feels like an 'old person' and, in their own ways, they are defying expectations of the ageing process.

Fabulous fashionista on Chanel 4:
watch it here

Quote from the documentary:

Look chic but not crazy. "Everything I wear has a story," says Sue. "I take my art out of the home and wear it. But, at the same time, I try to keep a certain amount of elegance with me. I want to miss that point where you as dress as a clown "

"I don't feel that i am eccentric, it is not a conscious things it's just happens organically, around me, this is the way i am"

a new concept: the necklace bag, a bag that can't carry anything, or a elbow jewel!

My friend Tanya is an amazing actress, we performed on a show together nearly 2 years ago and she helped me to stage my play Lost/found face that I presented at Saint Martins and felt she would be perfect to wear my jewels.

by Simona Zemaityte

Indian Godess necklace

When she was doinf her make up Tanya was "should I put more glitters?"

I was: Of course, More, I want MORE glitters" and after Tanya was "Oh my God, I have been Anne-Sophied", or maybe Anne-So-feed, I like the idea of feeding people with art!