This statement is displayed
prominently in the lobby of the theatre.
Women’s fashion is a lens through which we can challenge the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between the ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ self. In A(r)mour: The Defiant Dress I contest the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience; I celebrate sartorialists who do not follow logical criteria — those who seek subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations.
The works of A(r)mour: The Defiant Dress reveal personal narratives that open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered personalities arise from the fragility and instability of the seemingly fragile gossamers with which we wrap the feminine psyche. By emphasizing aesthetics, these works highlight masculine supremacist vulnerabilities as well as the liberationist soul of the female; their dramatic form proffering resistance against the logic of the sexist system.
In making the selections I have, I fetishize the defiance of woman living in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. Created in the omnipresent lingering of a ‘man’s world,’ these concealing, protecting “couverture des femmes;” these disguises breaks the tradition of compliance with a creative emphatic. This personal affront to tradition is important as an act of meditation; viewers may undergo transubstantiation.
These collected, altered and personal works are being confronted as aesthetically resilient, thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces.
Welcome and enjoy.
Charlotte Mercer
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