Changing Clothes

What truly is a shirt?

 

Is it instant warmth and comfort? Or is it really an amalgam of fiber molecules? Or, is it actually a complex system of global trade, agricultural politics, farming traditions, and the detailed labor of a young woman’s hands on the other side of the planet? Can the truth of a shirt really fit into a space as small as your closet?

The “Changing Clothes” project investigated the politics and ecology of clothes through a series of social sculptures that explore the everyday world of producing, wearing, and discarding clothing.

In the gallery to the left, you will see:
• a shirt made out of maps from around the world
• a giant hand-woven reproduction of a clothes tag
• a clothes tag exchange
• Lea spinning yarn in the mall
• a shirt sewn out of vintage flour sacks
• a hand-spun shirt the size of a cotton blossom