I made this "installation" in my garden when I was in France using the drying rag to hang all my dancing barbie dolls with colourful threads to create a giant barbie forest I can walk through.
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| barbies sunbathing on the airer... |
The idea came from observing the barbie drying on the airer. My Mum is so thoughtful that she always put the barbies in the washing machine from the charity shop before giving them to me. But she wasn't really happy about my all installation idea because she couldn't hang up the laundry anymore…
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| barbie forest mobile |
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| Maybe the first experimentation of a bigger scale project... |
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detail of a photo shoot by Sylwia Grzegórzko, shoes customise with colourful dolls creating a plate pattern on the shoes for a friend.
Se told me "I like these shoes but I feel that I am going to take the tea with the Queen so could you make them a little bit more funky?
...don't ask me twice! |
Nina contacted me out of the blue for doing a project together when I will be in Paris.
Nina studying cinema at La Sorbonne and passionated by writing and fine art has a really strong personality.
She assumes completely her curve body and dedicate a lot of articles on her blog to self acceptance. It is not because she is not doing a size 8 that she is hiding herself behind shapeless black clothes. On the contrary, her wardrobe is full of close to the body cut colourful top and feminine dresses that emphasise her attractive features.
Paris is tougher than London for outside the norm beauties where you can see a lot of big sizes British girls walking in the street with tight glitter leggings and cropped tops without any complexes and without anybody staring at them. Beauty is most likely a matter of attitude and confidence but it is easier said than done as fashion industry engrained theses standardised beauty cliches in our easily influenced minds.
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| Rubix cube necklace |
I was interested to stylise my creations on this project combining my jewels with her quest identity through auto-portraits between the mischievous kid and the femme fatale, between the remembrance of a lost childhood and the foretelling of a bright future. I love the chemical reaction produced by this encounter. it was still my jewels but completely reinterpreted and re appropriated by its new owner as a medium of the re-invention of the self.
Nina has a real talent for writing and she makes her own
analysis of my work which is very accurate, making me considering another dimension of my creations. I don't know if it is the right interpretation of my work but as says R.Barthes after the "Death of the author", interpretation escape to the artist and everybody produce his own meaning from the piece he sees and I quite like that.
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| Parisienne... |
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| A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, |
For French readers, an article about our meeting
here
Another project, a collaboration I've been doing with the stylist Manuela Trujillo Buscató who is working with a lot of up cycling material, the theme of the shoot was "recycling".
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| Lego hat & Rubix cube necklace |
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| My paper jacket on a newspaper dress |
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| little cars necklace |
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| lego necklace & earrings |
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Lego necklace + dress
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My Lego performance in Brighton for the Pink Fringe Festival with
Traumfrau theatre, great team and great response from the audience, + I had the chance to travel to Brighton for the first time!
read more about this performance
here
watch the video
here
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| As the night goes, the dress becomes more and more busy, lot is going on and the audience is creating its own architectural craziness on it! |
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| Hello! |
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| people making their own design on my dress with Lego |
i will have the chance to perform my Lego piece, with a brand new Lego dress for the opening of the summer Festival by the Barbican around the Jean-Paul Gauthier exhibition!
hope you can come along!!!
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| Another exiting fact, my pictures of the Lego dress are exhibited at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, my work is going around the world, and you, will you catch the Lego virus? |
I love the barbie dryer installation....I used to do this with my barbies and other dolls when I was a child after washing them. Sometimes I used to lay underneath it and look at all the dolls looking back at me. This made me think of that. Nina is wonderful, I love her spirit & she is gorgeous, I enjoy women who are themselves & don't fit into the norms, I enjoy London for this reason. Glasgow up here in Scotland is quite the same too. It always makes me think of the quote from Alice in Wonderland, 'We're all mad here' hehe! Your work is spreading, this makes me very happy to see :) Once my shopping ban is over (haha) I shall be treating myself to some of your beautiful work, sooooooo excited :))) x
RépondreSupprimerP.S. Saw your comment...so lucky to have those glasses in blue, I love blue. Anything eccentric is the best :) x
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