Title: Installation View
Date: 1996
Media: mixed
Dimensions:
Price: contact the gallery for priceFassbender Gallery 312.666.4302 |
ARTIST STATEMENT
Knitting Existence
Experience is always knowledge, light and initiative
Existing in the world means acting, but acting in such a way that
in the final analysis, the aim of action is our very existence
Emmanuel Levinas
To be naked is to be without words.
Ogotemmeli
Knitting is like writing, connecting thoughts to produce discourse in material form. As you knit you become conscious of time, you can make it visible. The content of this simple action is duration itself. It is a slow process, the progression of life, experience, existence.
Life experience is reflected in the body, that dark habitat of our thoughts, desires, intimacy and senses which rise to the surface like tattoos on the skin. It is on the skin that the public and the private come to meet. Projecting images on the surface of the skin, X-rays or conceptual shapes which function as tattoos, you expose your inner self to the light. The frailty of the body, continually in flux, must be covered for protection. Knitting dresses is building shelters for survival, electrified fences to protect that private space.
Clothing is like a chair or a dwelling, a human construct designed to be occupied, like a second skin accompanying us on our journey through the space of life. My intention is to create dresses like houses, made for the purpose of standing still, anchored in place, so as to contemplate the world, while remaining in contact with life -- from a certain distance. My dresses are external structures designed to bring out internal experience. When the body inhabits the dress, the process is complete.
Maribel Doménech
This exhibition was presented in cooperation with the Instituto Cervantes
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