The culture of dressing
Laura Malosetti Costa
Pablo Uribe
The Black Story of the White Woman
A white woman wore black.
Black with black. She had black pijamas
and black soap.
All her things were black
Black as night. Black as coal.
But
When the woman cried,
her tears were blue
and green
like little parrots.
The woman cried
a lot and she played the flute.
The
White
Woman
Dressed in
Black
Crying
and
playing
her
flute.
The milk of dreams. Leonora Carrington
From Uruguay, Gerardo Goldwasser’s work proposes in Venice and around the world a critical reflection that stages an aspect as basic and complex of human societies as ways of covering and exhibiting bodies, disciplining, and distinguishing them. The subject that his work addresses is the ways in which each human being is perceived of as a persona, constructing their appearance, their way of walking on stage every day of their life: the etymology of the concept refers to classic theatre, the “actor’s mask” would be its first meaning. That mask is at the origin of the culture of dressing.
The installation, which covers the entire Uruguayan pavilion, posits –through deconstruction- the dramatic tension implicit in the dynamic of watching and letting oneself be watched that every human being stages every day, of each persona that establishes a network of connections based on their own appearance, their modes of appearing before themself and others with their body completed and regulated by clothes that cover their nudity.
Humans are not the only animals that adapt their appearance to their vital needs (trickery, seduction, hunting victims, defence), but they are the ones that do so most quickly and effectively at the mercy of the articles of clothing that they use to complete, disguise and cover themselves for different purposes. That tension is first posited in terms of uniformity and distinction: the dynamic of the fashion industry, which has had Venice as its epicentre since the dawn of modernity as a bridge between modern Europe and the Orient. This is unveiled by Goldwasser in its most uncomfortable antithesis: the industry that managed to eliminate differences based on a will of domination and total submission to absolute authoritarian rules.
The sensual pleasure of fabrics and visual, tactile, and even sonorous qualities (the friction of silks, the smoothness of furs, the shimmer of the colours) which -from the fantastic Orient- came to Venice and dazzled European culture are completely absent from Goldwasser’s work. There are no colours there, nor signs of distinction: there are templates, measures, rigorous use of the available resources to sustain a rigid pre-established order with the purpose of producing uniformity.
The standardisation of corporeal measurements which signified the popularisation of designs that had been reserved for the most privileged elites since the 19th century is deployed in its most extreme version here as an instrument of dissolution of subjective individualities. Goldwasser inherited a tailor’s manual from his grandfather for the design of military uniforms, a synonym for strict obedience to the rules and renunciation of the individual expressions of personal appearance. And from there he deconstructs this central problem of modern cultures.
His personal story is the point of departure of a history of the world. His proposal covers European cultural history from a critical and intimate perspective. He is the child and grandchild of tailors. His grandfather was a German Jew -a survivor of the Buchenwald death camp- whose life was saved because of his profession, which allowed him to escape to Uruguay.
Measuring tools, patterns, mirrors, the intelligent use of every centimetre of cloth for mass production are presented by the artist without a single note of colour, without distinctions or pretensions of beauty, with an overwhelming presence in the giant spools of black cloth. A cylinder of monumental proportions comprised of three spools of cloth that enclose hundreds of tailor patterns designed to cover the body of the “average man.”
A long series of left sleeves occupy an entire wall, proposing -with notable subtlety- a critical allusion to the will of absolute domination implicit in the design of uniforms and the salute of uniformed Nazi multitudes.
The audience completes the piece. We are first invited to look at ourselves (and assess our appearance) in the mirror located at the entrance to the pavilion. Next, we are subjected to the singular experience of feeling the overwhelming presence of the absence of colour.
The tons of cloth on the cutting spools, the rows of sleeves, the measuring tools, the tailor’s templates organising every loophole appear as a black dream that enters into conversation with The Milk of Dreamsthat Leonora Carrington imagined in the mid-20th century. She was also subjected to that intolerable pressure to accept uniformity over the freedom of bodies and people.
We have before us the remains of a giant shipwreck: that of the project of subjecting all human wills, all of the individualities that comprise our species, to a pre-established rigid order, a fixed and coherent identity, a radical machination of the human visible in the gestures, in the cut and disciplining of hair, but especially in the uniforms that they were forced to wear. This is not limited to soldiers, but includes industry workers, service staff, drivers, ordinances, students- everyone, without exception.
Goldwasser is not the first or only person to think about tailoring as a tool of uniformity. We think of Filzanzug (Felt suit) or the grey clothing of the members of America Utopia, musician David Byrne’s latest music project. Goldwasser’s deconstruction poses new questions in terms of gender roles related to fashion and professions. Women were the seamstresses who worked for male designers for centuries, and women were the recipients of their wares, the main consumers and bastions of that industry, which was based on the concept of distinction. But the effects of the logic of the domination of the patriarchy impacted millions of men, who were subject to precise and discriminatory rules. The creativity in the dresses that Leonora Carrington designed in her paintings was prohibited for them: soldiers, workers, poor office employees, cooks, and so many others.
In a new context of post-pandemic global crisis, of the risk of extinction of our species -which is the only one that is capable of extinguishing all the rest, of extinguishing it all-, this installation confronts us with projects, pasts, and presents that seek to turn humans into infallible, punctual, orderly, obedient, constructive machines that are at the same time destructive of everything that cannot be utilised or disciplined. The planetary scene has become even more complex. The fashion industry’s waste pollutes the oceans, and millions of digital and industrial operators no longer wear uniforms. They are scattered across the most far-flung corners of the centres of hegemonic culture and live in conditions that condemn them to existences that are increasingly more distant from the products they make.
Gerardo Goldwasser’s Persona invites us to make history. It invites us to critically view the present and imagine new forms of being a person in a future that is perceived as threatened by new destructive technologies that impose uniformity. It invites us to reflect on the darkest aspect of the culture of dressing and the very gesture of imagining new and creative fashions and installing oneself as a person in a context of crisis in mechanisation and new technologies. These are seen as becoming increasingly dehumanising, more closely connected to uniformity under suppositions of the “effective” use of everything that surrounds and involves us. It invites us to look at and think through the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the questions that impregnate the sciences, arts, and myths of our time; and the destructive and unstable connections between the human species and every other life form in black and white and in that anonymous tailor’s manual that Goldwasser inherited from his grandfather with no publication information.
A
asceticism. The philosophical or religious doctrine that seeks to purify the spirit through the denial of material pleasures.
average man. The idea of the average man (l’homme moyen) developed by Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and naturalist Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) is the result of the articulation of a series of physical, moral, and intellectual causes that remain constant at specific moments in history and in certain geographic locations. Consequently, he stated that there are different typical men or patterns for different societies. This apparent variability suggested a unique certainty to Quetelet: that of the existence of a complete regularity and constancy in the repetition of the most varied social occurrences. Quetelet proposed explaining that regularity based on the observation of not only physical forms -such as height, weight, and thorax size- but also behaviours such as crime, murder, suicide, and madness.
B
Boss, Hugo. The German dressmaker Hugo Ferdinand Boss founded his workshop in Metzingen in 1923, in the midst of the Weimar Republic. He mainly focused on the professional, athletics, and rainwear aspects of apparel. When his small business met with limited success, Boss decided to radically change it in 1931. He joined the Nazi Party under member number 508.889 and focused full time on making uniforms for Nazi troops under the slogan “Uniforms licensed by the Reich.” The company eventually had 300 employees, most of them Jews from concentration camps.
Buchenwald. One of the first and largest concentration camps in Germany. It was operational from 1937 to April 1945 on Ettersberg Hill near the city of Weimar. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of its liberation, German Artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz created one of their anti-monuments or negative monuments. They installed a metal plaque at ground level at the entrance to the camp that bore the list of the victims’ nationalities. The plaque is warmed to 37 degrees Celsius, the temperature of the human body, day and night year-round. Visitors can kneel before it and feel its warmth with their hands.
C
cajón de sastre (tailor’s drawer). The expression “cajón de sastre” has its origins in the space that tailors generally have under their table that allows them to store all sorts of tools, such as thread, needles, and thimbles. The Real Academia Española lists two metaphoric uses of the term in daily language: “A diverse and disorganised set of things” and “A person who has a large number of disorganised and confused ideas in their imagination.” (Our translation.) Mauricio Rosencof used the term Cajón de sastre as the title of his series of journal articles in his 2005 book in a gesture that alludes to those meanings and -explicitly- serves as an homage to his father, with whom he began to work as a tailor as a child: “My old man was a tailor/sastre He called himself a disaster/de-sastre. However, I described him to my small daughter as the famous brave little tailor from Grimm’s tale.” Isaac Rosenkopf was born in Poland and emigrated to Uruguay in 1931, anticipating the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe. Mauricio Rosencof was a leader of the National Liberation Movement (Tupamaros). He was one of the nine detainees considered hostages, tortured and incarcerated by the Uruguayan military dictatorship from 1972 to 1985.
canon. The concept of canon (derived from the Greek word kanon) designates a series of rules that regulate the parameters of behaviour, authority, and beauty ideals. It is based on a dynamic of inclusion/exclusion. It seeks to be immobile, though it constantly changes and is disputed. While its origins are religious (the set of writings considered sacred, naturally revealed), it always has been controlled by those who held a position of power. From a feminist perspective, Griselda Pollock proposes differentiating the art history canon that established an almost sacred pantheon of “great masters,” deconstructing the foundations of its mythic structure by working against the grain instead of trying to include those excluded by its very conception.
Cragg, Tony. British sculptor born in Liverpool in 1949. Constantly seeking out new relationships between people and the material world, Cragg created his first pieces using simple techniques such as piling, splitting, or crushing materials. His work does not imitate nature or the way we see ourselves. Rather, it focuses on why we see ourselves the way we do.
D
dictatorship, military. Form of authoritarian government in which the executive, legislative, and judicial institutions are controlled by the armed forces, which prevents the people from engaging in the exercise of democracy. One of the common characteristics of military governments is the institutionalisation of the state of emergency, which is used to eliminate all judicial guarantees (civil, political, and even social rights) that protect individuals from abuse by the State.
E
El hombre del mameluco. In 1969, José Carbajal, “El Sabalero,” published his first vinyl LP record entitled Canto popular. Years later, in the mid-1980s, the name would define the movement of musicians organised around folk rhythms, protest songs, and a strong opposition to the dictatorship. “El hombre del mameluco,” the second to last song on the album, evokes the universe of workers’ struggles in the textile factory in Juan Lacaze, his hometown.
And suddenly, the expected:
something blue climbs to the top.
They are all overalls
that run like the wind,
and come from all parts
and the lie is over
and they go or die singing,
each assessing their life.
F
Filzanzug. Two-piece suit comprised of a jacket and grey raw felt trousers made by German artist Joseph Beuys in 1970. Made to fit his own body -in multiple editions-, it highlights the importance and properties of the materials as an integral part of the concept of the piece.
fashion culture. In modern societies, particularly after the mid-19th century, the drop in prices and dissemination of “dressing well” (which had been reserved for the aristocratic elite) created a phenomenon that has been described as the system of fashion by contemporary theorists like Valerie Steele. The standardisation of body measurements, invention, and dissemination of sewing machines, emergence of major department stores, and publicity in the graphic media all contributed to making fashion more accessible. Thus, the value of the new emerged at the same time as the paradoxical popularity of “exclusive” fashion. The global accession to European fashion trends involved a modernising and normalising process. From then on, dressing contributed to the construction and exhibition of bodies based on precise rules of sexual differentiation and gender and class behaviours, ensuring the reproduction of a rigidly normalised social order.
fashion. The phenomenon of fashion as a system of meanings that involve the creation of appearance, following trends, and -paradoxically- distinction as a fundamental component has received an extraordinary amount of attention from the most diverse disciplines in the past few decades. In 1967, Roland Barthes published The Fashion System based on research conducted between 1957 and 1963 that involved the analysis of discourses and images related to fashion in periodicals (which he called written fashion) from a semiotic perspective.
The academic journal Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture (Routledge) was first published in 1997. It joined many other publications dedicated to the study of fashion from historical, sociological, and anthropological perspectives, as well as those of theatre studies, film, literature, and visual culture. In Buenos Aires, Marcelo Marino, director of the Fashion Studies collection at Editorial Ampersand, which had published and translated a series of important books, defines his field of study as follows: “...the material aspects of fashion, practices related to dressing, and their sociabilities, the relationships with the body, with sexuality, with politics and their dialogue with visual and literary culture.” (Our translation.)
G
Green tea. Painting by Leonora Carrington created soon after she arrived in New York in 1941. Also known as La dame ovale, it presents an imposing feminine figure wrapped in a black and white blanket with a tiara (symbol of royal power and sovereignty) on her head. She is at the centre of a magical circle outside of a walled garden.
gender. Identity category around which parameters of each person’s behaviour, appearance, and sensibility are organised. Since the late 20th century, the concept has been taken up by feminist movements to remould the differences attributed to the sexes and insist on the fundamentally social and relational quality of those distinctions. Joan Scott proposes considering it a primary form of power relationships.
geometric abstraction. This concept emerged after the 1920s as a reaction to the excessive subjectivism of figurative artists, employed by avant-garde artists in an attempt to distance themselves from the purely emotional. Heir of suprematism and neoplasticism, geometric abstraction was characterised by the use of regular shapes. Using a great economy of resources and careful structures developed on the basis of rational principles, it aspired to achieve universality, eliminating all self-referential traces.
geometry. In 1849, Ramón Arnau y Cobera published the Prontuario teórico-práctico de sastrería basado en reglas fijas (Manual of theoretical-practical tailoring based on fixed rules), which included notions of geometry, general concepts, and specific directions for making suits: “The cloth on which a piece is to be cut is for the artist a blackboard in which his eye will trace and set a portion of the problems that should lead him to precision.” (Our translation.)
grey suit. David Byrne, the leader of the legendary US band Talking Heads, was interviewed by Timemagazine in mid-2014. Asked about the use of the iconic grey suit that he wore in live shows during the Stop Making Sense (1984) tour, he said that he thought of the suits as a form of contraband of radical ideas under the appearance of conservatism. In his last project, American Utopia (2017), which was built with a minimalist aesthetic, he revisited the approach but used a more pragmatic strategy: the suits were simply the easiest way to ensure that everyone on the stage looked similar. For Byrne, “creativity is what grows up through the cracks of a controlled environment.
I
image. Visual images are complex, polysemic artifacts that cannot be reduced to any discourse. They have their own body and always refer to an emotion, which is sometimes not linked in a clear way to their meanings. In1969, Harun Farocki filmed Fuego inextinguible (Nicht loschbares Feuer, Inextinguishable Fire), a potent argument against the use of napalm during the Vietnam War. Farocki believed that he needed an approach that would go beyond victimisation and encourage the spectator to reflect without it becoming abstract; avoiding documentary presentation of violence, presenting an opposing image. In one key scene, after reading the testimony presented by Thai Bihn Dan to the International War Crimes Court in Stockholm, Farocki extinguishes the lit cigarette he is holding with his right hand in his left forearm. Voice-over: “A cigarette burns at 200 degrees. Napalm burns at 1,700 degrees.
Iriarte, Alfredo. Uruguayan artist who lives in the La Boca neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. He is an actor, puppeteer, murga practitioner, clown, sculptor and mainly mask maker widely known in the Río de la Plata area and around the world for the sharp, sensitive characterisations that his masks offer. Over the decades he has continued working in the vocational theatre Catalinas Sur in Buenos Aires and with the Uruguayan murga Agarrate Catalina, among other groups. Persona. Es preciso aparentar lo real is the title of the 2017 documentary film by Delfina Romero Feldman, which takes up the ideas and teachings of this master of simulation. “Often, masks reveal what is thought to be hidden. The mask reveals who you are, what you’re like, and what you do.
J
jeans. Mass-produced trousers made of rustic, resistant fabric called denim (jeans in English, vaqueros in Spanish). They were invented for use in mining work in 1871 by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss & Co. Teen fashion adopted them in the 1950s, and they remain the world’s most popular garment. They are also one of the main causes of environmental pollution. Throughout its life cycle, a single pair of jeans uses around 11,500 litres of water, generates 32 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 10 of dyes and chemicals. If we multiply that by the over 1 billion units made each year around the world, we get 11.5 billion litres of water, 32,000 kg of CO2 and 10,000 kilos of dyes. These data come from a famous study conducted by France’s Environmental and Energy Control Agency (Ademe) on a single pair of denim jeans weighing 666 grams made using 1.5 square metres of cloth, which has a life cycle of four years and is washed every three times it is worn.
jute. A strong fibre similar to linen and hemp that is extracted from shrubs that are especially common in India and Bangladesh (Corchorus capsularis and Corchorus olitorius). It has been used to make clothing since Antiquity, especially for the soles of sandals because of its light weight and sturdiness. It is common to see this material used in ropes and packaging. In Uruguay it has been used since the 19th century for the soles of espadrilles, a light, warm-weather shoe that was a must for rural workers and became fashionable in the 20th century. Originally introduced by Basque workers, today it is recognised as a natural, attractive ecological material by major brands, which use it in footwear and luxury items.
K
Kamataka. State in south-eastern India where major multinational textile companies have installed factories to make clothing. The world’s most expensive and successful brands built their workshops there so that they could pay paltry wages -lower than India’s minimum wage of 417 rupees (less than 5 Euros) per month- to nearly 500,000 workers who live in extreme poverty according to a report by the Washington-based Worker Rights Consortium.
M
mémoire collective. In 1925, French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs created the foundations of a sociology of memory and coined the term ‘collective memory,’ a product of the dual relationship between the individual -who remembers based on the perspective of his or her social group- and the social group -which interactively builds a memory that is only manifested in individual memories. According to researcher Gabriel Peluffo Linari, since then, there have been several versions and interpretations of the idea in the social sciences and political practices. However, and overall, there has been a tendency to recognise that social memory is a construction of certain groups with power and thus does not comprise an entity built once to remain the same forever. Rather, it involves an ongoing process of transformation and reconstitution that reveals the uses of memory, that is, the interventions made on certain memories of the collective past in order to use them to build a useful model of memory for groups that struggle to achieve hegemony. (Our translation.)
measures. The first tailors developed complex systems for measuring bodies. These workshop secrets were passed down from master to apprentice. In the 18th century, tailors began to create cutting systems. François-Alexandre-Pierre Garsault included the sheet of paper that was used to take measures in his tailor’s manual Art du tailleur. This was used until the metric system was introduced in France in 1795. In addition to the metric tape, the pattern, ruler, and tracing paper were employed to produce measuring systems throughout the 19th century.
These systems, along with the invention of the sewing machine in 1790, changed the textile industry forever. Military uniforms had to be made in large quantities, so the sewing industry learned to be effective and efficient in mass production. Soon civil clothing manufacturers emerged along with ready-to-wear pieces. This was also the period in which the first major department stores opened. They had tailors on staff 24 hours a day. However, tailor-made clothing continued to be preferred by those with the means to acquire it and became a sign of distinction and wealth. The attractiveness of the tailor-made suit continued to be the same: a unique piece for each person.
Morandi, Giorgio. Painter born in Bologna in 1890. After moving away from avant-garde movements, he found the thread that connected an absolutely personal, silent, and apparently immobile poetics in the objects that surrounded him. This included subtle shifts in light and minimal variations in colour. Over the years, he tended to progressively reduce the topics he covered and engaged in an extreme technical filtration, focusing on soft brush strokes and the use of titanium white, concluding with a nearly abstract painting. In an austere interview with The Voice of America in 1955, he said: “I believe that there is nothing more surrealist or abstract than the real.” (Our translation.)
N
No (1). In 1980, Idea Vilariño (1920-2009) published a series of brief poems written over the course of her life under the enigmatic title No. Many people believed it was an evolution towards negation and silence, but Idea herself saw in it the struggle between two vital forces. Attachment to life would lie precisely in “Saying no,” which can be read in the first verse of the first poem, which opens the book in the original edition.
No (2). In 1980, a plebiscite -popularly known as the No vote- was held in Uruguay on 30th of November. It was organised by the military government in order to modify the Constitution and, to a certain extent, legitimise the dictatorship. The project was rejected by 56% of voters and led to the subsequent process of democratic opening.
nude. The human body, masculine and feminine, material and spiritual, space of life and death, foundation of the intellect and its passions, has always played a central role in the arts, at least since Apelles, in the culture that we learned to recognise as Western. The feminine nude was and is synonymous with the fine arts. Considering the highest point of the profession of painters and sculptors, the object of battles and (perhaps the most intense) debates, the nude was held up as a decisive genre of artistic activity until at least the early 20th century. Always imprecise but also categorical borders between the decorous and the obscene were traced over and over again on the naked body. It became the fort that was most intensely besieged by avant-garde artists in the 19th century. They worked in the space of risk, drawing hair where they shouldn’t have, recording poses that transgressed unspoken rules and challenging the conventions with which -in the words of Sir Kenneth Clark- an unclothed body is dressed to turn it into a nude. Or into a nudo, in Italian, the mother tongue of art. The battles of Courbet and Manet in Paris became canonical in the history of modern art, but there were many others within and beyond Europe. For example, Eduardo Sívori engaged in this struggle with his Despertar de la criada in Argentina. The artistic nude invites us to engage in new reflections in a world overpopulated by spectacular bodies manipulated by technological artifice and aesthetic surgery in a constant exhibition deployed in shop windows, the audio-visual media and marketing.
Ñ
ñandú. Classified by Linneo in 1758 as Rhea americana, the ñandú or Greater rhea is the largest bird in the Americas. It is a flightless running bird. The first European conquerors were fascinated by it, as they confused it with the African ostrich. They were also intrigued by the approach used to capture ñandús: by chasing them until they fell to the ground, exhausted. The birds have grey and black feathers. They were traditionally used to make feather dusters, but one would assume that indigenous communities used them for clothing. Interestingly, 19th and 20th century drawings show them with multi-coloured feathers, which are uncommon in Uruguay. For example, Tabaré’s image, which was used on the covers of school notebooks for much of the 20th century, depicts them in that manner.
O
opera. Clothing is a fundamental component of opera. Its creative function lies in positioning the characters in the place and time of the melodrama, emphasising their characters, and making them stand out from afar. Throughout history, great artists have created opera costumes. Today, many opera houses have their own costume workshops and have also opened museums featuring the most notable suits and dresses. Since it was founded in the 17th century, Venice was an important centre of operatic creation and dissemination, first in the parties and receptions at palaces such as Mocenigo, where Monteverdi premiered his first compositions, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Proserpina rapita. The first room set aside for musical theatre with paid entrance was Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano, which opened in 1637. Sixteen more soon opened, and Venice became the main city for opera. The year 1790 saw the opening of Le Fenice, the theatre where the most important operas would premiere until 1836, when it was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt twice (the last fire was in 1987) and continues to be one of the most important opera houses in the world today. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, interaction between literature, the visual arts, and music in the construction of large audiences or imaginary communities based on operatic melodrama played a key role in the founding narratives of American nations. That is the case of Tabaré, the poem by Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, a fundamental piece in sentimental education in Uruguay since the 19thcentury. It inspired four operas not only in its country of origin, but also Argentina, Mexico, and Spain.
optimum use. In tailoring, the premise of “optimal use, minimal waste” strictly follows the rational distribution of the sets of patterns that comprise an article of clothing. When cutting tables are designed, the templates are carefully placed next to each other in a sort of horror vacui in which the smallest amount of waste is considered an error.
P
Palladian mask. The Basilica Palladiana is a Renaissance building in the central Piazza della Signoria. It was originally conceived of as the seat of government. Part of it was destroyed in the 16th century, and the city council appointed Andrea Palladio to rebuild it in 1549. In a masterful move and in order to reinforce the existing structure, Palladio added a marble loggia comprised of arches on top of columns that surrounds the old building, thus hiding the original Gothic design.
persona. From the Latin persōna, meaning ‘mask used by an actor.’ The word seems to have its origins in the verb personare, which means ‘to dream’ or ‘to make dream’ and ‘through’ (per), and refers to amplifying the actor’s voice through a mouthpiece that was included in the masks used in Greek theatre. The concept of a persona expresses the singularity of each individual human, designating a specific being in terms of both their physical and psychic aspects in order to define their unique and unrepeatable character.
proportion. The relationship of correspondence between the parts and the whole. Since Antiquity, a divine proportion was identified in both natural forms and human creations: the golden ratio, which Euclid defined as what results when the entire line is to the largest segment as the largest segment is to the smallest segment. Since then, it has been the subject of all kinds of mathematical and aesthetic speculations. It is found at the foundation of Joaquín Torres García’s constructive universalism.
Q
Querini Stampalia, Fondazione. Created in Venice in 1869 at the request of Count Giovanni -the last descendant of Querini Stampalia-, it was meant to encourage cultural production based on the study of its own historic and museographic heritage. Its imposing library includes over 350,000 volumes, including both antique and modern books. For example, its collection includes the original manuscript of Il libro del sarto, the only known evidence of the series of tailoring treatises published in Spain around 1580. Dated between 1548 and 1579, it is an exceptional piece written by two generations of tailors in Milan. It includes plates and engravings illuminated in colour that represent masculine and feminine patterns and figures. They were used as workbooks.
R
remember. Federico Fellini’s 1973 film Amarcord is a Franco-Italian production written by Fellini himself and Tonino Guerra that was filmed in the director’s hometown of Rímini. In the region’s unique Romanic language, a m’arcòrd, means ‘io mi ricordo’ (‘I remember’). It is a film about memory in fascist Italy of the 1930s. It features the universal in the specific, addressing how a single person’s memories can become a collective and universal memory.
resignation. “There is no place for art when civilians are dying under missile fire, when Ukrainian citizens are hiding in shelters, when Russian protesters are being silenced,” declared the curator Raimundas Malašauskas alongside Russian artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov in his letter of resignation to represent his country at the 59th Venice Art Biennale.
S
seamstress (costurera). Whether practiced professionally or in the home, the role of seamstress has been an important tool for social ascent of women, men, and children from the lowest social strata for more than two centuries. It has provided sustenance to family groups and afforded women tools (rented or otherwise) that allowed them to work. What does it cost to dress well? That question, which is rare in studies on clothing and fashion, was posed by María Isabel Baldasarre in her keen reflections on the meanings of dressing in turn of the century Buenos Aires. “Being well dressed meant being honest, reliable, a good person...” (our translation). Seamstresses were key agents of this process -especially among the lower classes-, though they are seldom mentioned as such.
South American failure. Francis Alÿs named the results of his project, which he developed between 2003 and 2006 with Olivier Debroise and Rafael Ortega, A Story of Deception. It involved travelling through the South American plains and Patagonia following the steps of 19th century narrations about errant hunters who walked great distances in pursuit of the ñandú (Rhea bird). He never found them. The piece -a collection of documents, photographs and drawings- was exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in Buenos Aires, but the centre of the exhibit was a fascinating 16 mm film that consisted of a silent two-minute loop recorded from a moving car along an endless highway. An illusion generated by heat dissolves the horizon, which disappears over and over again each time the spectator approaches it. This piece, which may be the most severe of his metaphors on the uselessness of human effort, opened and provided the name for his retrospective exhibit at the Tate Modern in London in 2010 and the MoMA in 2011. A Story of Deception was translated to Spanish as Historia de un desengaño, but “deception” does not precisely translate to ‘desengaño.’ Rather, it means ‘engaño’ (illusion) and also ‘decepción’ (disillusion). He may have found a larger metaphor there: a sublime failure. Deception can be considered a topos related to how the first European travellers perceived those South American plains. Deception, fear, worry.
T
Tabaré. Tragic poem written by Uruguayan Juan Zorrilla de San Martín during the ten years he spent in Chile and Argentina. It was first published in 1888 and was then republished and translated innumerable times in both the Americas and Europe. Although it is a founding piece of sentimental education on national identity in Uruguay, its extraordinary and immediate reception in the Americas and Europe place it beyond the limits of the Uruguayan nation. The first editions of Tabaré were not illustrated but did have a luxurious cover featuring the character nude and alone, pierced by the sword of the conqueror, his bow and arrows by his side. He is associated with the indigenous peoples of the Americas because of his feather headdress and is depicted on a landscape of palm trees (an unmistakable American element). There and in all subsequent images and illustrations, Tabaré appears as a solitary martyr of an extinct race, visually symbolised by his nudity and in an improbable plume of colours. The cover proposes a lamentatio in which the poet invites the reader to share in the pain of a character mourned only by him and nature.
The Black Story of the White Woman. Brief text about a woman whose gradual change in mourning clothing causes her to cry vividly coloured tears in a sentence in which each word occupies a line, like a calligram. The piece was written by Leonora Carrington in 1950 and is part of the collection of short stories Leche del sueño (The milk of dreams).
The milk of dreams. Notebook comprised of stories and drawings made by Leonora Carrington in the mid-1950s. The artist read it to her children at night. This early feminist and unquestioned representative of the international surrealist movement chose a title that seemed to allude to two specific vital actions: feeding children and getting them ready for bed.
tailor’s manuals. German artist Christoph Weiditze created in 1529 a series of pen drawings hand-coloured with watercolour, tempera, and gold and silver metallic inks. The subject of the piece was the suit. He precisely documented the pieces of clothing and accessories that were in fashion in various European regions. Known as suit codices or Tractenbuch, they are conserved in Nuremberg at the National German Museum with the signature Hs. 22474. Fifty years later, and over the course of nearly 150 years, the first seven tailor’s manuals were published in Spain under the generic title Geometría y traza. The first in this series was published by Juan de Alcega in Madrid in 1580. The last was published by Juan de Albayceta in 1720.
tailor’s son (hijo de sastre). Roberto Jacoby, a notable Argentine artist with a persistent conceptual and critical trajectory dating back to the 1960s -with interventions such as Mao y Perón un solo corazón (with Oscar Masotta in New York’s Central Park in 1967) and Tucumán arde (in 1968)—, continues to make art, including his retrospective El deseo nace del derrumbe (at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía in 2011)—, remembers his experience as a tailor’s son: “Simply saying ‘tailor’s son’ explains a large part of my life. My father studied cutting in Amsterdam for three years and then sought exile in Germany and later travelled on to Argentina. Thanks to that practical knowledge, he could find work before his father, a chemical engineer who ended up selling industrial dyes. My mother was a dressmaker, another profession that disappeared some time ago. It seems like something you’d make up, but they heated the irons using coal, which posed the risk of ruining the fabric or burning down the entire workshop, which was also our home. In the early 1950s, my father started to study drawing so that he could sketch figures. I liked to draw comic strips, so he sent me to his teacher, an old man who shook his cane when we didn’t copy plaster friezes or fresh limes properly. Today I look at those watercolours and I cannot believe that I painted them at age 9 or 10. It was a path of no return towards the intangible world of art. (Our translation)
tailor. The trade of tailor (from the Latin sartor, ‘a person who repairs or arranges clothing’) emerged in the Middle Ages in the military field, when the need to cut and sew tight linen clothing for soldiers to wear in battle under their coat of mail emerged. Since the 12th century, the tailors’ guild (derived from the French verb tailler, ‘to cut’) was one of the most powerful bodies in European cities, with strict exclusion of female seamstresses. However, the traditions of nearly every ancient culture attribute the creation of the art of spinning, weaving, and sewing cloths to women. The goddesses Isis in Egypt, Aracne among the Lydians and Minerva in Ancient Greece, and the wife of Manco Capac, the first son of the Sun in the Incan empire, were venerated as the inventors of the trade. Women, sometimes enslaved, were responsible for spinning, weaving, and sewing garments for both sexes for centuries. Women were also the main recipients of luxury clothing and the focus of the fashion industry since the 19th century.
The Cyrus cylinder. Baked clay cylindrical piece that contains the decrees proclaimed by the Persian king Cyrus the Great after Babylon was conquered in 539 BC. In it, the new king legitimated his conquest, freed the slaves, declared freedom of worship, and established racial equality. Discovered in 1879 in the ruins of Babylon in Mesopotamia, now Iraq, the Cyrus cylinder is considered the first declaration of human rights.
thimble Nora Hochbaum, the Director of the Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires, recalls that her grandparents, Salmen and Rebeca, emigrated from Poland to Buenos Aires in 1935 with their two small children, Moisés and Isaac, aged nine and six. Their grandfather, Salmen, was a tailor, and his children learned the trade from a young age. Both children began sewing as children and focused on making trousers. Like a typical family of Jewish immigrants, they decided that one son would study. Nora’s father, Isaac, was to become a doctor, though it took him 11 years to complete the programme because he continued to sew and assist his brother in the family workshop in the La Paternal neighbourhood, as it had grown to be relatively successful. Salmen died very young of appendicitis at the age of 45. Isaac specialised in gynaecology and obstetrics and decided to invent a surgical thimble, which he used in his operations, to push the needle. His method became well recognised.
trade. The trades have sustained humankind since the beginning. The oldest are hunting, fishing, and farming. All of them involve skills and physical strength, as well as mental creativity and community attitudes. Their social characterisation and appreciation have varied over time, though they have traditionally been underestimated in relation to other intellectual and artistic activities because they are linked to physical work and manual ability. This issue is at the centre of the reflections that Richard Sennett offers in The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008), where he discusses false dividing lines that Western societies traced between the hand and the head, practice and theory, the craftsman, the artisan and the artist.
U
uniform(is)ation. Uniforms are used to make all of the parts of a whole the same, or equivalent. They eliminate differences and homogenise. In the school environment, the use of uniforms contributes to hiding differences linked to class and social condition in order to provide equality of opportunities. In armies, they allow soldiers to recognise each other in battle and to leave aside their feelings, obey, and adhere to a shared cause. In factories, they protect the economy of operators and business owners by eliminating distractions and allowing workers to avoid wearing out their own clothing. Uniforms turn people into parts of a whole that encompasses and goes beyond them, and whose design does not belong to them.
unique thought (pensamiento único). In January 1995, Ignacio Ramonet published a celebrated editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique in which he criticised the ideological landscape following the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to Ramonet, neoliberal economics had become hegemonic and monopolised all academic and intellectual spaces. The term became widely known among the left and within anti-globalisation movements, which found it to concentrate a set of self-evident ideas, paradigms, and assumptions that stood as obstacles to ideological debate.
V
violence. Georges Didi-Huberman wrote the enormous essay Cómo abrir los ojos in 2010. In it, he reflects on the ethical use of images: “Elevating thought itself to the level of anger (anger caused by all of the violence that exists in the world, that violence to which we refuse to be condemned). Elevating anger itself to the level of a task (the task of denouncing that violence with as much calm and intelligence as possible). (Our translation)
W
Whisky (2004). This Uruguayan film directed by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll focuses on the mechanical, repetitive, and traditional creation of standardised clothing in the story of the Koller brothers, the sons of a Polish-Jewish man who emigrated to Montevideo. They both inherit their father’s trade, but one got the family workshop of stockings and the other emigrated to Brazil. They meet up on the anniversary of their mother’s death and give each other stockings. Told with humour tinged with melancholy, the film builds an aesthetic of repetition and the sadness of a trade that was inherited and is about to become obsolete, like the old machinery that is set in motion each morning.
Wind of Uruguay (Viento del Uruguay). In 1989, Swiss documentary filmmaker Bruno Solini made the film Vento dell’Uruguay, which is based on the book Los albañiles de Los Tapes, by Uruguayan writer Juan José Morosoli (1899-1957). According to Juan Carlos Onetti, the book is based on Morosoli’s childhood. His father, a Swiss émigré who had sought in the landscape of the Minuano hills the evocation of his country’s mountains, was a builder and directed the Los Tapes cemetery project. The loneliness of man, the overwhelming power of landscape, and the extinction of the trades are some of its main themes.
wardrobe A set of clothes that build a meaning, either in terms of the person’s unique style or the characterisation of a time and place for a theatre or film production. The term, which is fundamental in the world of the performing arts and audio-visual art, is inextricably linked to the construction of personas (or characters). The term is also used for the room in which those transformations in appearance are carried out before an actor joins a performance. It can be used to find or change clothing or to put on a uniform in the case of a sporting or military event.
witness. The figure of the witness signifies a guarantee of truth, even though it refers to the materials placed in strategic places to measure damage to or the resistance of building structures. It also refers to the person who offers their testimony of something that they witnessed, lived, or heard with honesty and knowledge. The figure of the witness is key for a crime to become public and is necessary for the healing of victims’ trauma.
X
xxl. This acronym, which means ‘extra extra large’ in English, has become popular in all languages to refer to extraordinarily large body proportions as compared to the “average man,” which tailor’s manuals used to create based on standard models. Over the past few decades, it has also been used critically by hip-hop groups and in films and publications.
Z
Zurdo (left-handed).A little over 10% of the world’s population is left-handed, meaning that they tend to use the left side of their body. The causes of the dominance of the right side of the brain in a proportion of humanity that remains stable over time are unknown. Historically, left-handed people faced stigma and discrimination. People were forced to write with their right hand until quite recently, and left-handed individuals were prohibited from engaging in many activities and professions. Since Antiquity, the left side was associated with the dark side, evil, error, sin, and Hell. Today left-handed people continue to face many difficulties because objects, instruments, and tools are designed for the right-handed. The Spanish word ‘zurdo’ has been used in a derogatory manner, even to refer to members of left-wing political parties or those who hold such views.
Gerardo Goldwasser
Persona
By Alejandra Villasmil
Gerardo Goldwasser’s work has always been linked to memory and power. An initial consideration regarding this connection has to do with the traumatic experience of his grandfather, a survivor of a concentration camp for Jews, who was forced to work making Nazi uniforms. His father and uncle, also tailors, nurtured his artistic experimentation. From here, and from the autobiographical, Goldwasser's work encounters an affinity with so many other collective stories of pain, oppression and fragility.
Historical and current concepts such as dystopia and bio-politics, extractivism and labour exploitation, or the swing between tolerance and intolerance in which we as a human species -and as a planet- are immersed, inform the aesthetic and conceptual discourse of this artist, who uses patterns, monochrome fabrics and traditional tailoring tools, all clearly related to his family background, in his work.
Along the way, it also delves into other micro-politics, such as the ethics of the use of uniforms or the questionable practices of the clothing and fashion industry. With poetry and an underlying vulnerability and hopelessness, Goldwasser’s textile works don’t wrap us up in a protective blanket, but draw us closer to the trauma of violence with all its nuances.
For many years now, Goldwasser has been building a profound critique of the society of control, employing an austere viewpoint and an almost existentialist discourse. He seems to ask us when we will wake up from this (anthropocentric) nightmare that is gradually destroying us, how we will recover from the inoculation of norms and lifestyles that threaten our very existence in the world.
Persona, his proposal for this Biennale, is displayed in the Uruguayan pavilion through various exhibition devices that are related to the path of his artistic output. These imposing objects, some of which are interactive, sophisticatedly translate his acute observations on the indoctrination of bodies and minds in all of time and space.
In the following interview, he offers us his perspective on the future of the pressing issues that his work weaves together.
— "His personal history is the starting point of a global history”. I would like to begin this conversation with this observation made by the curatorial team, as it is a very good interpretation of the flow of your artistic output and how it maintains a dialogue with the stories of authoritarianism and systematic control of recent centuries, both in Venice and Europe in general. How can we succinctly trace the transition from your early works to what you are presenting at the Venice Art Biennale now?
— Looking back to the 1990s, my family's tailoring workshop basically consisted of my uncle and father working together. That was when my interest in learning about the tailoring trade grew. I also understood that art projects would become a collective endeavour. Because many of my concerns were directed at asking questions and intensely observing the procedures involved in manufacturing. My father "designed" an outfit and my uncle, let's say, pieced it together. In between, multiple situations of recognition arose from the materials. They generated possibilities with very diverse results, despite the fact that the procedure followed was to cut a paper template, mark out a chalk outline on the fabric, make the cuts, and from there move to the machine stage. In all these situations and others, proposals arose where discussion took place. In the call for the Biennale, a collective work occurred on another dimension, with Laura and Pablo as curators. I returned to a coexistence of reflections, tests, defining concepts, testing materials and things that didn't work out. This could be a first approximation between my initial works and the work of the Biennale.
Could you tell us about the process of developing this proposal for the Venice Biennale?
Pablo Uribe contacted me nine months ago enquiring whether I'd be interested in him being the curator for the call for the Biennale. What joy! I accepted, of course, and Laura Malosetti later joined the curatorial duo. The exchanges were very good for me personally, because both Pablo and Laura had previous experience with the Biennale. Pablo took part in previous editions as an artist, and Laura had been a jury member for the call for the Argentine submission.
It was important to have that accumulated experience; it had a significant organisational impact on the possible structure of the project. Pablo has been familiar with my work for many years, and I am also familiar with his. (I've admired his work for years.) This was the first time I had met Laura. Absolute harmony from day one! The team also includes the architect Pedro Livni along with Nicolás Branca, who designed the catalogue and communication strategy, and Agustín Piña, who carried out the rendering.
In relation to the artistic proposal, we were interested in focusing the exhibition on a dialogue between works linked to tailoring within my repertoire and incorporating the production of a new installation for the Uruguay pavilion and public participation.
This exhibition includes works linked to tailoring: ‘El saludo’ (The Salute) is an installation of 85 manufactured left-arm sleeves, which was exhibited for the first time in 2010 at the Blanes Museum in Montevideo and was adapted for the pavilion space; ‘Medidas rígidas’ (Rigid Measurements), is a small wooden ruler with varnished areas resting on the floor and the wall; and ‘Mesa de corte’ (The Cutting Table), is a new installation of three large-scale coils of black felt and interlining templates on the outside and inside.
‘Medidas directas’ (Direct Measurements), consists of a wooden pallet on the floor and a mirror on the wall that invites anyone who dares to climb on it to contemplate their appearance.
How is the project conceptually articulated and how were the pieces displayed?
We selected and produced works that had a mobile visuality, that is, they are installed, static objects, but if you observe them, they have an internal energy that gives you the sensation of a process that is very present. They look like "finished" works, albeit admitting variants in their structure.
Another way of explaining this is the emphasis placed on the intermediate processes of tailoring as a constructive structure of the installation. The criteria of serialised repetition are present and contribute in a natural form so as to be able to see that internal “latent energy”. In short, the idea was to alternate and validate these artistic procedures in the installation. These characteristics have always interested me in my works.
We also considered the absence of colour. I believe that the notions of measure, acts of measuring, don't need colour to be applied. Colour would be integrated into the exhibition in an ephemeral way with the presence of the public from time to time. There is colour. It comes from the clothes worn by the public, which is naturally incorporated into the exhibition for a brief time during their visit and disappears when people leave. We also decided to offer the public the opportunity to encounter materials that they usually know in clothing, such as cloth or felt, and observe devices that contain meanings.
Your work, and this proposal in particular, is based on a complex reality that is autobiographical as well as historical and present day and, therefore, disturbing when we think of ourselves as humanity: the violence exerted on bodies. This is perpetrated by authoritarian political regimes and by other control mechanisms inherent to such violence that are exercised in more subtle ways -or at least, they are imperceptible to the collective conscience-, such as the incentive to consumption, advertising, fashion and technology. Based on your personal experience, what is your reading of the society of control and what it implies in our daily lives?
Control has always existed. In the world we live in, there are very sophisticated strategies for making us believe that there is no control, but there always is. There are situations associated with control that function as its mask. It exists as a matter of scale, or rather, the presence of these situations: they're violently visible, but are disorienting. When there are situations where there is an outburst of violence, the mask falls away. Or it just isn't there. For example, the act of consuming involves a form of control so that the mask stays in place and is the visible face that is acceptable, even shareable. Today, for example, it has been decided which countries receive the COVID vaccine before others, to name -as you mentioned- something from our daily lives.
I'd like to talk about the connections between your proposal for the Biennale and the curatorial concept ‘The Milk of Dreams’ by the curator of the international exhibition, Cecilia Alemani. Your work is undoubtedly part of the discourse of this edition, as it deals very poetically with the regulations and conditioning imposed by the prevailing political and productive systems. Whether we like it or not, humanity adopts –and adapts to- an anthropocentric mode of coexistence, a model that we created and under which we suffer that can no longer be sustained. Fortunately, there is an awakening of the collective conscience regarding this issue, and we see this more and more in art. So, how can artistic creation affect this dystopian reality outlined by Alemani?
Art has one of the most interesting objectives for me, which is the transmission of knowledge. That may be art’s most powerful objective (as Luis Camnitzer has stated many times). If we understand this aspect, which may sound a bit limited in a sentence, and we open it up so that knowledge is triggered by multiple interests that concern us, I can observe a path of study, with many possibilities of impact.
Artistic devices help us question things. So does contemporary art. For example, when we present works in which a system of "comparison of things or objects" leaves us with an important conclusion. That is very good. What I mean is that I believe that it opens doors for people to be able to express themselves with simple or complex elements that are easily accessible and loaded with meanings. And this demystifies the figure of the "unattainable artist" in terms of mastering a specific technique.
And with respect to Alemani's proposal, things have become more interesting by having chosen Leonora Carrington, a surrealist artist, as the inspiring setting. In other words, we can interact with a painting by Leonora, where her artistic interests are pictorially embodied, and the artists participating in the Biennale perfectly establish diverse narratives and coexist. I think that’s really interesting...
Responding more directly to your question about our connection to the proposal and what you commented at the beginning of your question in relation to regulatory issues, Laura, Pablo and I have agreed that these characteristics of my work were robust points of contact with the topic of the Biennale, and we decided to activate them, and even enhance them. What's interesting is that this activation was implemented taking into account specific decisions such as scale and space while maintaining the meanings of these works.
Persona, as your project is called, is also one of the entries in the Glossary that nurtures this publication. It refers both to the mask that we wear as individuals in society -which translates into appearance-, and to the potential to be unique, to be persons. How can one deal with this contradiction between authenticity and being unique in terms of art, and what we "should" do -or are called to do-, with respect to what others expect of us?
Well, you know, art also interests me because it destabilises things that are supposedly firm or established. Perhaps we're all unique in some things, and not so in others. During the months I spent preparing the project, I realized how many things were very agreeable and moving. Due to my family inheritance, I'm using all the tailoring tools that belonged to my grandfather and then to my uncle and father. I find small notes, parts of the cutting scissors that are protected so as not to hurt their hands, things that we wrote down together, in short, many things... And I do confess that at times I stopped working and found myself remembering all our projects, and missing them immensely. I also began to realize that while we were building a prototype of the installation in Montevideo, and looking at the photos registering that stage, my hands and feet are very similar to those of my father. Perhaps we're not so unique
That's really lovely, because it refers to inheritance from the perspective of family and affection. And here I propose a link with the culture of clothing. You're presenting your work in Venice, which has been the capital of fashion for centuries, and certainly Italy continues to be one of the countries with the highest production and consumption of high fashion. Fashion is culture -and haute couture is certainly artistic-, but it's also a market and consumption, and a symbol of social status. A creative industry that dictates certain patterns of being and being seen. As in the story of your grandfather, or the design of military uniforms, fashion implies a renunciation of individual expressions in terms of personal appearance. And this is bereft of innocence, because when you standardise bodies, you standardise -you discipline- people's minds. From this perspective, what aspects of the history of clothing, uniforms and the fashion industry have filtered into your work?
I believe that the use of tailoring patterns, metaphorically speaking, offers me the possibility to talk about people. The sectors of the body that are perceived from a distance in these silhouettes of templates speak to me equally of men and women. Although the sizes of the templates have a difference in the installation when viewed from any distance, they are perceived as the same size.
To mention another aspect linked to my work, I find a permanent exercise in composition, grouping and coherence in material resources, which from a tailoring perspective can be applied to a work. Or rather, it is a matter of the space of the template in the work. At times I'm interested in presenting this space as existing, but it can also be viewed as an absence.
Throughout the years, the project has been the use of these patterns to highlight the intersection of three scenarios: tailoring, art and violence. In the tailoring manuals that I've been studying, the chapters dedicated to uniforms lead you to visualise and reflect on issues of violence in a very direct way. Nevertheless, in the chapters on various trades, I've been able to see how the templates have adapted to societal shifts. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I do notice that the uniform templates haven't changed that much. Perhaps here there's also a point of contact with your previous question about control.
Beyond the flattening of subjectivities that accompany fashion and militarisation, we find other social spheres where the uniform, as a garment, has been used to instrumentalise group consensus, unique identity and 'equality'. Industrial workers, service personnel, cooks, chauffeurs and schoolchildren must all wear a uniform, but there's a latent rebellion among those who are ordered to do so. In Chile, for example, the law that regulates the work of domestic workers – here referred to as 'asesoras del hogar' (housekeepers) – prohibits employers from imposing a uniform. In this respect, do you think some progress has been made?
I'm glad to know that this is happening in Chile. Any clothing that can be used as a uniform is very unique, and has specific meanings. Those meanings include some that you accept more naturally. For example, when I was younger and started my art studies, I took part in printmaking workshops where material handling procedures could make your clothes dirty, such as with dyes and stuff like that. There you felt that the overalls to protect you had a sense, and were comfortable. However, making a person dress in an overall so as to make others notice that you have a domestic worker, which most of the time is a woman, or to make others realise that someone serves you all day, is something else. A nefarious combination of mistreatment and discrimination exists that generates social chasms.
Your work is closely related to industrialisation, which, given its dimension of mass production, has resorted to mechanisation and, more recently, to state-of-the-art technologies applied to such mechanisation. And these are dehumanising, as they increasingly dispense with manual labour and perpetuate exploitation in terms of labour rights. The maxims of "optimisation of production mechanisms" and "the effective use" of the neoliberal model are concealed through social responsibility programmes. How can we escape this, shall we say, trap?
I'm not sure if we can escape it that much. But here's an example, remembering my family and their trade. In recent years, tailoring workshops have been disappearing, which is why you mention being productive and catering to the masses, and replacing people with machines. However, I still remember my grandfather finishing a lapel by hand, as he believed that that's how such a job should be done, that it was clearly better that way. And with respect to the suits made back then, compared to the industrialised ones made today... well, there's a notable difference.
I really think that's an issue that's changed for the worse, and it will be difficult to go back to those working habits steeped in such valuable knowledge that implied working from another perspective, such as the pleasure of making something to a high level. In Uruguay, it was mainly immigrants who put all that care into manual labour and producing something of quality. And it didn't just happen in the world of tailoring. It happened in lots of other fields, like architecture, and so on. But those immigrants are no more; there's no one to defend that approach with robust arguments of experience and affection. And the new generations, bar a few exceptions, think differently.
It's a subject that encompasses very significant cultural issues. We know that these values persist elsewhere despite the passage of time and its accompanying changes. People have started to appreciate vinyl records again, right?
Yes, and in the world of textile and fashion, certain ancestral traditions are also being revalued, although sometimes this has involved cultural appropriation and dubious practices of co-creation. It's a complex issue. But let's return to the works you're presenting in Venice. I see 'Mesa de corte' (Cutting Table, 2022) as a comment on that notion of maximum use, which is also included in the Glossary of this publication: “In tailoring [...] the premise of 'maximum output, minimum waste' is strictly followed [...] Minimum waste is considered erroneous. You could construct a paradox regarding this issue of maximum use: on the one hand, resources must be used to the maximum for clearly ecological reasons, but there's also the human question... to make the most of human resources... Moreover, various studies have highlighted how the fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and therefore global warming…
I can talk to you about 'Mesa de corte' placing myself briefly on each side of the counter. That's to say, sensations I had when I thought about it for the biennale, and how I imagined that the public might react to it. This project arose, as I mentioned before, from observing and valuing these intermediate tailoring fabrication processes as possible works of art. Cutting tables are obviously objects that are understood horizontally, just like any table. They are laid out with a number of templates that are strategically located to take advantage of the raw material. If we could view them from above, they remind me at times – and this is very personal – of the plans of a city. Some templates could represent sectors such as neighbourhoods, and the spaces between them might represent streets, avenues, and places like that. Personally, I think that tailoring has many points of contact with architecture, and not only because of what I've mentioned. So far, this observation could be a link to trades, usage, people, cities, for example... That's to say, from the inspiration of a cutting table, to the biennale gallery, would be one side of the counter.
On the other side of the counter, I tried to puzzle out what I imagined the reactions of the public would be: people entering the pavilion observe three large-scale reels where a number of tables with rolled-up interlining templates, becoming trapped, barely visible, on the edges of the reels. Three reels arranged as they are located in the production lines, one after the other, leaving a small space between each so that people can pass through.
Also included in the Glossary of this publication is the biography of Hugo Ferdinand Boss, the famous German couturier who set up his tailoring workshop in 1923 in Metzingen, during the Weimar Republic, and who, in order to capitalise on his production, began to make 'uniforms under license to the Reich' and the troops of the National Socialist Party. The company had a staff of 300, most of whom were Jews from concentration camps. Apart from the distances involved, this reminds me of the decades of labour exploitation by the big clothing and footwear brands. Your work addresses this labour ethic. Could you comment on your piece 'El Saludo' (The Salute, 2010-2022) and its reference both to labour practices in the manufacture of military uniforms and to the salute made by crowds of uniformed Nazis?
I think that 'El Saludo' - a work that I'm very fond of - involves several things, or at least I try to make them happen. It also has as its starting point another work with the same title, a series of 1m x 1m photographs featuring my uncle. To conceive these images, we recorded some positions of the human body when the measurements were being taken to make a suit, and the arm is the protagonist. And I realised that the different positions of the arm for taking measurements could become, from the tailor's workshop, a ridicule of the salutes made by the regime. There are images where the arm is stretched out horizontally to the left (as opposed to straight ahead and with a stiff right arm), and there are others where the arm appears to be that of someone with a disability. The installation of 85 fabricated sleeves, which are hung with pins, offers the presence of the sleeves and the absence of the person. Perhaps they represent the result of a production run, where we can observe that people simply don't count.
Two of the industries that your work revolves around, military and fashion, have historically been male (and white) dominated. Women are the designers and seamstresses working for male designers, and they are, paradoxically, the recipients and main consumers of fashion items. The military industry, including the uniform manufacturing sector, is also essentially male. Are gender roles an issue you've worked on or would like to research?
I feel that during all these years of projects, and having presented my work in relation to violence and its links to the masculine, in some way (perhaps insufficient for others) it's also been referencing gender inequality. When you insist from just one side, the other side remains abandoned, attacked. I deeply respect the movements that don't change direction, which are clear, guiding and proposing changes that simply can't be put off.
In 'Medidas directas' (Direct Measurements, 2022), and as we mentioned before, you invite the public to go up to a small stage and look at themselves in front of the mirror. A simple and daily act, albeit involving the psychology of the image, the one we wish to project: appearance and self-image. Who is reflected in the mirror seeks external approval (in the vast majority of cases). Which direction do you wish to take with this new work, and why that title?
Yes, it's true, it's a simple and daily task. I think I thought more modest things about what to say. Tailoring fittings link people to mirrors. The tailor uses the mirror to "check" adjustments, and an interesting thing is to make the person turn around in order to discover what wasn't seen on the other side.
In relation to the Biennale installation, the pallet is an everyday object. It is easy and affordable to access, and it lifts up another object and places it in another place. The project is called Persona, and I thought that whoever climbs onto the pallet would fulfil our artistic dream of appearing as someone special, a special Persona. Which I think we all are. For me, the title evokes the multiple measurements that can be verified visually in a work when one is the work oneself.
Finally, I can't help but ask you about the experience of showing your work at the Venice Art Biennale, touching on this idea of connecting with other audiences and, of course, what that means for you as an artist and for Uruguay. How have you experienced this whole process, from the project's conception to its presentation?
Well, I experienced many sensations. In regard to the process, firstly, I always understood that the calls, the competitions, are a 100% risk. I always see a positive result as a surprise, never anything else. When the team heard the news, we were so happy after working together for nine months on it. Because it really was a great effort, on everyone's part.
Knowing that I represent Uruguay in the Biennale inspires different emotions. On the one hand, I'm really grateful. On the other, it's a huge honour and responsibility. Having received many congratulations from colleagues and even people I don't know, was so enjoyable and I am excited to see what will happen with other audiences. I'll tell you later! Taking part in the Biennale and seeing works by artists that I greatly admire will also be a really great experience. And there’s one feeling that is always under the surface: I wish my old man could be there...