Hussien Chaylan

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

At first i didn't know weather to think ‘Burka’ and ‘Afterwords’ as art or fashion. Once examining the pieces and how they are constructed i see her works more of an art form. what tended to make me lean to the side calling her works art is how she gets the viewers to think whether theses pieces art art or fashion. Art is always pushing the boundaries and there to make people question and think about issues or certain things. i believe her Chalayans work does exactly so. she leaves the viewers almost confused as to what exactly her works are. Art or Fashion?

Fashion i believe to be more conservative type of form of art were as fashion designers design clothes for looks and also function. Here Chaylayns work does have some sort of function but not the type of function we would use on a day to day basis. Who knows her work could maybe be the future in fashion and that people could in-fact be walking the streets in her radical items of art.

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

I feel that Chayans work allong with collaberating with companies commercialize there products has an affect on the type of artist she is perceived by others. This will have impact in the different forms of art she may choose to go for such as working along with companies to earn her income. True art i believe is what makes the audience question ideas or current issues in todays society. With Chayan working along with vodka companies and so on this tends to move ehr toward more of a designer where her job is to make her art to meet a requirement in order to satisfy the customer. In a way it is still a form of art but seen as more of a money making produce. this therefore takes away the pureness and freedom of her work and makes her fall into the capitalism ways in which the sole purpose is to gain more wealth.

3.Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

The Film ‘absence presence’ shows strong connections with how the evolution of science has been highly influential with art and its movements. i get the feeling that it is showing us how we as a race automatically see or perceive people and things as groups. we place things in these groups so there is an automatic prejudice towards things. i think that this automatic perception of grouping things and giving names to things has maybe been influential in how she trys to question and make us think weather her outfits are clothes or art as it is hard for us to put an exact name or group under her art works.

4.Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

We and everything around us are all currently evolving in every aspect whether we like it or not it is a natural process in which we genitically are made to do. Art is one of the many things that are evolving and changing. boundaries are being pushed which leaves us to question what we percieve things to be. These days the barriers of rt are contantly being pushed such as getting others to make your creations. I think that this doesnt take away the fact that it is creation and a pice of art. It gets me thinking what exactly art could be in the future and whether we will be able to grasp our fingers and point out what is art or not. Art to me is basically everything and anything we do. I think that maybe in the future somthing as stupid as digging a hole to earn an income could be seen as art.