Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

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?

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

My personal response to the first work, Burka, is that I don't like it. I don't like it because I feel that Chalayan's use of the burka represents the oppression over woman that the muslim religion supports. I like Afterwords, because I find the composition of the work quite interesting and edgy. I like how the almost primitive look that the bottom half of the dress has juxtaposes the sophisticated styling of the upper half.

In my opinion, Burka is art, because Chayalan is trying to make a statement, and that Afterwords is fashion, because although that too has a statement being made, it has also been designed to be aesthetically pleasing, which is a quality I believe is crucial for fashion to have.

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

                                                                 Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

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?

Some people may view Chalayan as a sellout for collaborating with corporations, however I feel that it has just given his work a different angle. The meaning of the work does change when it is used to sell products, because rather than being there purely for visual impact or to make a statement, it is also persuading consumers to purchase the product. I believe that his work is still art even in this context. another example of an artist doing this is Annie Leibovitz, a lot of her photography is purely shot for the purpose of advertising products, but it still has value as art, such as her photograph of Kieth Richards taken for Louis Vuitton.

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. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach? 

"A video installation telling a story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. The film questions whether the extent to which identities can adapt to new environments." Just from reading this synopsis of Chayalan's film Absent Presence, I think that it has drawn influence from modernism - which was a very science oriented movement - in that it covers themes such as genetics and biology.

by m

Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

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) andBefore 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?

I feel that it really depends on what type of art it is. For example, if a painter is asked to paint a highly detailed portrait to the exact specifications they had in their mind, they wouldn't be considered the artist because a large part of the portrait would involving specific skills. On the other hand, artists like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst have work which involve very unique ideas and creativity that make them special, so even though people like them get other people to create and sometimes even design their work, they are still the ones with the original idea and no one else would think of an artwork like that. Another interesting point is that there are artists like Jackson Pollock, who could have gotten others to splash paint onto a canvas in an almost random  fashion, but he painted his own works, and used a very unique style to do so, even when others try and imitate his style, they never achieve the exact same style as Pollock.

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html 
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/ 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0768786/
http://designmuseum.org/design/hussein-chalayan
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/?tag=evolution
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/blogs/art/2010-04-23/hussein-chalayan-beyond-limitations/