The Design of Pictorial Ontologies: From Unstitched Imaginaries to Stitched Images

This chapter from An Anthropology of Contemporary Art explores the material translations and the meanings of the images produced by a fashion designer whose research exemplifies some of the current evolutions in the work of a new generation of transnational artists. The production of high-end clothing can instantiate complex identity and political issues, even if fashion designers rarely share the “art for art’s sake” idealism with visual artists and generally assume the “utilitarian” finality of their innovations. Contemporary fashion design forces us to re-examine the dichotomy between the inner and the outer. Fashion as a Western social practice and as an industry is historically tied to modernity, capitalism and its corollary, colonialism. In the Western world, the denigration of the materiality of surfaces and the supremacy of function over superficial ornamentation affects the analysis of all the artistic productions categorized as “decorative,” in particular fashion objects because of their close relation to femininity, appearance, ephemerality, and permanent change.