No Logo (Prêt-à-porter)
Taking from Naomi Klein’s No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, a book published in 1999, (in which Klein addresses the effects of “super brands”; Nike, McDonalds, Shell, Microsoft, etc. and these large corporations taking out competitors with their size, lawyers, contractors and advertising agencies resulting in four major Nos: “No Space”, “No Choice”, “No Jobs”, and “No Logo”for they contract out all their labor to 3rd world countries, doing away with factory for production), I designed the exhibition in a form of a “runway fashion show, Prêt-à-porter ” naming the brand “No Logo”, where diverse sculptures made of shopping bags mimic the catwalk of models on a runway show each expressing unique character and form.
Having been a shoe designer in my early career, incorporating my associations with the design industry as a point of departure was a logical place for my debut solo-exhibition. The deconstruction of the used shopping bags into each unique forms purportedly address the lack of individuality in the global market: lacking in true variety of designs and tastes, functionality, and life style concepts. Exploiting the inherent properties of a paper made container with 6 sided box-like shape somewhat resembling architecture, that’s also a vessel which is malleable and behaves a bit like fabric, allowed me to think about blurring of inside and outside. The bags, while being “permanent — disposables”, they also communicate “movement”, and the transience of an object’s life- mimicking the models walking swiftly past you, giving barely time to grasp details of their outfits, quite fittingly speaks to the expected duration of the collection each season.
For No Logo Part ll Click the link below: