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Design

Waste Electrical Wires Are Woven into Delicate, Lace Garments by Designer Alexandra Sipa

United Kingdom-based designer Alexandra Sipa creates spellbinding accessories and garments from waste electrical wires. The Central Saint Martins’ graduate initially was inspired to experiment with wires as textiles when her headphones broke, leading her to extract the colorful coils and cables to create wire lace. 

The designer learned to craft vibrant lace from YouTube videos, books, and her own mishaps, and one of her enchanting dresses took 1,000 hours to complete. Many cultural and historical references are woven into her pieces, including her interest in extreme austerity and heightened femininity in Romania. “The aesthetic of Bucharest is a mix of French architecture, grey brutalist apartment complexes, and mega communist structures (like the Palace of Parliament), while the women are usually very careful about the way they look, getting all dressed up for a supermarket trip and loving the ultra-glamorous, ultra-feminine look.”

Objects of nostalgia, the ruffled garments evoke her Romanian grandmother’s damaged, garden fence. They mirror the endless colors that were revealed throughout the cracks. More broadly, Sipa’s work is dedicated to how her grandmother cares for her household objects, reinventing them with time. “Every time I visit her, there’s something changed around the house, something moved, something repainted,” the designer says. “She will make any object look like a treasure, no matter where it came from. That stuck with me.”

Sipa’s garments echo her views on sustainability, and she believes that otherwise unwanted products should be seen as an opportunity to create new inventions and discover unusual techniques. “As my practice is rooted in creating luxury products out of local waste sources, my collection tackles one of the fastest-growing sources of waste in electronic waste, reaching 50 million tons in 2020,” she explains.

The designer’s goal is the complete circularity of her garments. “The industry is becoming aware of the urgency for change due to the climate emergency and the increasing demand from consumers for more sustainable options,” she explains. “However, companies need to recognize the business opportunity in the circular fashion industry.” The designer also stresses the importance of recognizing the economic, environmental, and social impacts. “ Fashion needs to become more sustainable from the inside out, not only in the materials used but also ethically in the treatment and compensation of workers in the production chain and workers designing the clothes.”

To follow Sipa’s vividly woven designs, head to Instagram, where she shares updates on new pieces and glimpses into her studio. (via Euronews)

 

 

 

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Making of :::: Look 1 from ROMANIAN CAMOUFLAGE. Discarded Electrical Wires Lace Dress. @bafcsm @1granary #bafcsm20

A post shared by ALEXANDRA SIPA (@alexandrasipa) on Jun 19, 2020 at 10:58am PDT

Art Photography

Sprawling Roots and Richly Hued Gowns Permeate Mary Sibande’s Postcolonial Artworks

The immensity and depth of Mary Sibande’s multi-media artworks reflect the magnitude of her subject matter, which explicitly entwines the enduring effects of British imperialism and the apartheid. Through photographs, sculptures, and sprawling installations that scale floor to ceiling, the South African artist most often features a central Black woman, who is shown enveloped in purple roots or grasping thick, black thread dangling from a nearby portrait.

Named Sophie, the figure’s role is subversive and one that sheds light on the particularly “cruel history of Black female oppression and its implications in contemporary life—in particular, perception and ownership of freedom.” Sophie is dressed in color-specific costumes resembling Victorian-era clothing and often is wrapped in an apron, a garment synonymous with domestic work. Each bold hue is rich with cultural and historical contexts.

(Sophie) is first encountered in the traditional blue uniform of a domestic servant as she dreams of the possibilities denied to her by discrimination and inequality. Sophie is then transformed into a fantastical figure, enveloped in purple representing the bitter struggle against apartheid and the promise of equality. In her most recent incarnation, Sophie wears red, the color of anger, as she gives form to popular disaffection and continued civil unrest across South Africa.

Living and working in Johannesburg, Sibande shares many of her postcolonial projects and news about future exhibitions on Instagram. Get a deeper look into her work on Artsy.

 

Art

Living Chia Germinates from Clothing Abandoned on a Wash Line by Artist Bea Fremderman

Concerned with the ongoing climate crisis, Queens-based artist Bea Fremderman imagines an apocalyptic world of the not-so-distant future. Her living sculptures of everyday objects and clothing appear to have been abandoned suddenly, allowing nature to take over as quickly as humans left. “I think of them as relics of the future,” she told Cultured in 2019. “With my work, it’s not doomsday. It’s about starting over, dealing with what we have, and trying to make anew with what we know.”

Fremderman plants chia seeds among pant legs, hoodies, and a lone sock that crawl over the apparel and envelop it in a thick carpet. The roving sprouts transform the items and helps question human consumption. “At the core of my work is this issue of new nature— what things are left behind, what will outlive us, how we’ve changed the landscape,” she said. “We used to create things out of rock that would break down, and turn into sand, which comes together and becomes rock again, but now we have things that don’t break down.”

Find more of Fremderman’s germinating sculptures on her site.

 

Animation Documentary

Bloomers: An Animated Documentary Recounts the History Behind an Undergarment Business

Consumers are paying closer attention to the ethics and business practices behind the products they buy, and animated documentarian Samantha Moore is shining a light on one company creating everyday essentials. Last year, the Shropshire-based creator released “Bloomers,” a short film that chronicles the history of the Manchester-based lingerie company Ella and Me, which began production in the United Kingdom before moving abroad and back again.

From flowing silk to lace-trimmed underwear strung up only to be snipped apart, the detailed project colors mostly the garments, swaths of fabric, and spindles of string. The workers and machines remain black-and-white line drawings throughout the film as it walks through the manufacturing cycle from design to consumer purchases.

Moore helps illuminate the impacts rising production costs had on Ella and Me since its beginning as a mom-and-pop business. She documents its inception and even the employees’s familial connections to the textile industry. The animation is set to a diverse soundtrack that includes interviews with the company’s team, in addition to noises commonly found on the production room floor, like scissors slicing through soft cotton and the repetitive tick of sewing machines.

Since its release, “Bloomers” was nominated for the Best Short Film at the British Animation Awards 2020, was the winner of the Best British Film at London International Animation Festival 2019, and took home the top prize as the Best Documentary at ReAnima International Film Festival 2019. Keep up with Moore’s animated documentaries on Vimeo and Instagram.

Art

Second Hand: Ceramic Dresses, Shorts, and Other Faux Garments Created From Found Ceramic Tiles by Zhanna Kadyrova

Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova creates sculptural representations of clothing from found ceramic tiles which are often displayed in situ. She began the series, Second Hand, while in Sao Paulo in 2014 after discovering the rich decorative patterns of tiles used to cover Brazil’s shops, cafes, and residential buildings. For her first works, she bought several styles of “second hand” tiles which she then constructed into garment-like objects which were displayed on standard wooden hangers.

For the series, Kadyrova has also worked with a silk factory in the Ukraine in 2015, and sourced tiles from the Film Processing Department of the Kiev Cinema Copy Factory in 2017. This year, she produced an installation for the Galleria Continua in Cuba which runs through August 25, 2019, and will have work on view at FOAF Prague later this month. You can see more samples from her series Second Hand, in addition to finding more ceramic sculptures of everyday objects, on her website. (via Trendland, Visual Fodder)

Art

Frozen Victorian Garments Arranged into a Larger than Life Bouquet by Nicole Dextras

Bouquet by Nicole Dextras is a composition of 15 frozen garments reminiscent of a floral arrangement, however the beauty is intended to be both enchanting and foreboding. The alluring collection of Victorian dresses was created to appear more like Venus flytraps rather than to reference romance, and speaks to mythical man-eating trees described in science fiction texts like J. W. Buel’s 1887 text Sea and Land. 

“Today we understand the use of symmetry and patterning in nature as a survival skill,” Dextras tells Colossal. “Birds and flowers in particular seem to go for the ‘big display’ to attract a mate and humans in our vanity, are susceptible to the same spell of wonder. This bouquet however was made with ice; it made its big splash in the wintery forest and within a few days it was gone.”

The collection of frozen garments was created over the course of several days during Dextras’s art residency at Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. Dextras would spray the forms with water each night when temperatures were at their lowest to build up the right composition of icicles, and bond the garments into one large installation. Like many of her frozen installations, the work leaves no trace and is instead preserved as a subsequent photo series. You can find more of her work on her website, Facebook, and Instagram. (via Hi Fructose)