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
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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 Afterwordsand Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion? (Research some definitions for these terms.)
Hussein Chalayan, Burka (1996) (99
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Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000
Hussein designed "cloth" for Muslim women, which is something I personally liked. This being the obvious art work that could be linked to Post-Modern Fashion. As we can see that similarity happened at both Chalayan's fashion and Aiweiwei's Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola logo. This is designed to shock the viewers, and take the advantage of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. This is creating a new form by mixing the contrast.
The custom of Muslim is extremely special, as women cannot reveal too much skin in public, so wear a bachelorette to protect their face to avoid strangers from seeing there face/skin. However Hussein Chalayan break the rules. This is a new valuation of hybrid culture forms, which cancel the "high/Low" categories. According to Kreis (2000) by 1990 artist start have their own mind in their art. They tried to visually represent what could not yet be given verbal expression(p.251). Artist begin to destroy the traditional meaning. But Hussein used his own way to express's feeling about what fashion means to him.
I think Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) are genuine fashion because Chalayan's clothing not only can give people a visual show, they also involve the real world through their work. Afterwords(2000) was an amazing fashion show, he used different textures which nobody else had used before. For example metal gives the feeling of the restoration of ancient ways combined with modern fashion, showing a huge difference in the styles.
So what makes Chalayans fashion fashion? I think his works are often expressed using a vital and meaningful concept. He constantly keeps a consistent design style and develops clothing that other designers have not designed before. Relative to fashion, he chose a pragmatic, relative to luxury, he chose to design. Therefore I do believe his clothing can be called fashion.
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?
Chalayan does have strong links to industry. He put his wild idea associated with business and balance across, creating market clothing which has hit the market trend like a storm, and have become extremely popular. He jump into 3D design work, which was extremely different from his clothing design, but he successfully made valuable industry work, and continues to sell them at an affordable price. As he said : "My work is about ideas. If I had to define my philosophy in just a few words, it would be about an exploration, a journey, and storytelling – it is a combination of these things with suggestions and proposals at the same time" There is no limit for art so every visual thing can be defined as art.
Chalayan does have strong links to industry. He put his wild idea associated with business and balance across, creating market clothing which has hit the market trend like a storm, and have become extremely popular. He jump into 3D design work, which was extremely different from his clothing design, but he successfully made valuable industry work, and continues to sell them at an affordable price. As he said : "My work is about ideas. If I had to define my philosophy in just a few words, it would be about an exploration, a journey, and storytelling – it is a combination of these things with suggestions and proposals at the same time" There is no limit for art so every visual thing can be defined as art.
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?
The Absent Presence is an enigmatic story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. It opens the argument on how certain identities can or cannot adapt to new environments. And in turn be able to generate a research based narration for Hussein's cross-disciplined installation with filmic images and sculptures.
Some of the ways they may have inspired Chalayan’s approach, which was his project for venice biennale last year- being a strong experience for the viewers and the one before that, called 'Place to Passage', which he toured with, was a film. His collections are always challenging and
he gained a lot out of them. Everyone of the projects have a different impact on him. He makes a Large effort to push himself as far as possible to achieve the highest results for the viewers.
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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?
Im my opinion it doesn't matter when and or why it is important if the artist personally made the piece or hired other people to make it, in the end all we talk about the piece and the ideas it brings to our mind. Its really about how the artist created an idea and how he came about it, that is how it makes audience interested and it becomes their intellectual property. In reality it is credited by them, no matter how much they personally crafted it.
‘The Tangent Flows’ was a concept based on his experiment, and trying out un-usual ideas: It is part of his creative process, a method that keeps him interested in fashion design. After all his design concepts have a tremendous influence on the public. His success is purely due to his emotions, and every time he creates clothing he is not happy with the 'finished' standard practiced. For him it is a huge part of the process to produce the work by himself completely. For Chalayan, fashion is an applied art in as much as it represents the employment of an artistic sensibility to create functional objects: function over beauty.
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/
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