build for nineteen/i ask that i lie down in the vines: a dialogue

May 2024

cyanotype (vinca vine) on silk noil and silk habotai, cotton gauze, cotton twill, synthetic whalebone, plaster, packing waste of paper and plastic, wire, scrap fabric, dried flower stems, and a candy wrapper

Built as my capstone project for Montclair State University (MA Theatre Studies, May 2024). Sitting at the intersection of fiber and performance art, built for nineteen/i ask that i lie down in the vines: a dialogue draws on my experiences as a disabled theatrical costume designer, resituating the act of performance as a conversation piece between two dresses. Here I begin my work in exploring the “in-between” and the alienation felt while working with my disability through costume-specific dramaturgy, using body-as-text, highlighted by the clear liminality of the process of cyanotype printing on the silks. A combination of historical 1890s patterns and self drafting/draping and cyanotype exposures of vinca vine over many days, all while drawing on somatic experience, I focused on dysfuntionality, the longer you look at the piece, the more you notice is unwearable/unwell about it. Audiences will notice unfinished and actively fraying edges, pieces sewn together upside down to warp the seams along the back, gussets in unusual places, sleeve supports sewn directly into the gauze instead of worn underneath (and general confusion over these being worn with what is meant to be a dressing gown—something we associate with the home, sleep, and illness), visual unbalance with the upper bodies and arms, the difference of the mounts between a mass market dress form and a plaster cast of my own torso, and more as they watch the dialogue unfold. In viewing this piece, I ask audiences to answer to themselves: in what ways does your clothing respond to its current space? In what ways do you respond to your current space? Are these responses the same or different? Does your clothing “speak” to you?