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| "Various
AZ Six Month Seasonal Uniforms," 1992-95. Installed at Diechtorhallen,
Hamburg, Germany. Various fabrics, leather straps, and suspenders;
dimensions variable. |
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“A-Z Six Month Seasonal
Uniforms”
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| Zittel’s longest-running
continuous artwork, the "Uniform Project" began in 1991
while the artist was working in a gallery in New York City. As she
was working at an office job , Zittel was expected to wear “something
respectable” to work. As a young artist, Zittel had very
little money to spend on a wardrobe and decided that wearing one
fabulous outfit, day after day, was the solution to her problem.
While there is often a social stigma attached to wearing the same
clothes two days in a row, Zittel’s response to the immediate
situation was as pragmatic as it was provocative. Confronting the
values placed on fashion and hygiene, Zittel’s fantasy creations
are a daily experiment in living. Each handmade creation responds
to a particular moment in the artist’s life – her most
current interests, tastes,
and thoughts. When Zittel began to run out of ideas for new outfits,
she developed a set of formal parameters to work within. Interested
in the geometric clothing made by Russian Constructivists at the
turn of the century, Zittel determined that every article of clothing
would be modeled after a rectangle
– the original shape of the fabric. Reveling in the absurdity
of her task, Zittel’s whimsical creations push an interaction
between the human body and rectangles to the limit. Growing tired
of the rectangle after a while, but wanting to continue to make
clothes where a material is used in its rawest form, Zittel began
making dresses from a single strand. Turning to crochet and like
the rectangular Personal Panels, Zittel’s latest dresses grow
out of a absurd but poetic logic. |
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