Hussein Chalayan

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? 

By looking at these two images it would seem that Chalayan is trying to take forms of clothing we are aware of and change them in a way that makes them almost un-wearable. One being that the skirt in 'afterwords' looks way to heavy to walk around in. While second being all to revealing clothing in 'burka' that shows half/fully naked women. Chalayan studied fashion design at Saint Martins yet i believe his work to be more of an expression of art. I believe the difference between the two, fashion and art, is that with his work being art he is able to freely creative clothing items with no boundaries but if it was fashion he would have to stick to something more, lets say appropriate.

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?

Chalayan is said to be the mad scientist of fashion. Being paid to create installations for well known companies by no means derails him from his main passion, but allows him to further explore and experiment in a new field of art. Does the meaning of art change? well, I don't think so. Art is all around us. Yes maybe it serves another purpose than only being an expression of ones self, but i think the reality is that anything can be art if it has a meaning. In 'The Level Tunnel' for instance, even though it was a piece of advertising made for vodka, Chalayan was giving free rein over what he made and how he built it. This in itself is how we know it is still art.

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?

I think 'Absent Presence' is strongly linked to humanism and the idea that identity is very important in our lives. Chalayan could have been inspired by the fact that the clothes people wear resemble who they are as a person which allows us to see who they really are. He could of also been inspired by the large number of popular television crime shows that air all the time and include constant DNA analyzing.

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?

It is easy to see how the idea of not creating your own work can stir up controversies. Yet it is also blatant to think that just because you had help, what you made is not art.  It is even true that some artists have other people help them even with paintings. This can be seen with famous artists who existed along time ago like Michelangelo. I do agree that art made by the artist might be a little bit more special than that he has had help with, but that is besides the point. I think art is an a idea. How that idea is brought to life is up to the artist.

http://www.vogue.com.au/fashion/designers/hussein+chalayan,253?display=bio

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/2858/level-tunnel-installation-by-hussein-chalayan.html

http://art100.wikispaces.com/Hussein+Chalayan

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/