Performance
The importance of Performance in the presentation of fashion and clothing, and in highlighting the roles that we play in our daily life, is explored in the final section. It features film footage of Yoko Ono’s performance of Cut Piece at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York in 1965, for which the artist invited the public to cut strips from her clothing. While the scraps of fabric fall to the floor, the unveiling of the female body suggests the total destruction of the barriers imposed by convention.
Works for this section include:
Yoko Ono
Cut Piece, 1965
Yoko Ono first performed this piece in Japan in 1964. She sits motionless on a stage while the public are invited to cut her clothing. Closely in tune with the second-wave feminist movement that began in the 1960s, the work explores women’s emancipation from constraints on their identity represented by clothing and encourages respect for the female body. Ultimately, it also suggests the value of nakedness as an expression of identity in its purest form.
Gillian Wearing
Sixty Second Silence, 1996
This video piece examines the authority of clothing and the dynamic of the group. People dressed in police uniforms are arranged in the ranked pose of a formal photograph. As time elapses they start to fidget and the individuality of each participant emerges, diminishing the authority of their uniform, with all its associations of state and power.
Hussein Chalayan
‘Son’ of Sonzai Suru, 2010
In this installation Chalayan uses Bunraku theatre, a traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre, to examine the manipulative
element of the fashion industry. The beauty of the dress is evident, but the controlling figures around it invite us to consider how our perception of the value of fashion is managed by its presentation. The piece demonstrates Chalayan’s ease in bringing together different cultures and creative disciplines.
