Relationship I :

For the first piece, 'Relationship I', I chose a dress that I couldn't wear because I had gained weight, remade it and found a garment factory to make a new dress out of fabric made from corset pieces. The original dress and the dress made from the corset pieces were worn on two mannequins and displayed in a staring gaze at each other: the 'perfect' body of myself and the 'imperfect' body of today. I try to make the dresses made from pieces of corset look harmonious, as if the women who choose to wear corsets, including myself, want to make their bodies more "normal", that is, to conform to what is expected of them. The truncation, abandonment and discontinuity of these fragmented, worn corsets suggest that women are becoming anxious and disoriented by the new demands on their bodies in the public aesthetic. Such a display juxtaposes the whole with the fragmented, the external with the intimate, creating a particular feeling of silence but with a voice.

Relationship II:

For the second piece, Relationship II, I chose a suit jacket that my father wore 20 years ago and reworked it, using fabric sewn from corset pieces, to make a new suit in a garment factory. I juxtaposed the two blazers, where the hard and soft materials, the dark and light colours, the relationship between male and female, are expressed in a paradoxical way. The superficial dependence of the corset pieces is an unconscious 'submission' of women to men in a patriarchal society. In Brian Turner's view of a "somatic society", "the body is a product of social construction; a fragmented multiplicity of identities; mobile and within social space." Women are not truly liberated by the liberation of their bodies, they continue to transform their bodies to suit the male aesthetic and endure all sorts of pain. "When women are immersed in correcting their exaggerated weaknesses beyond their control, male domination is consolidated." (Susan Brownmiller, "Femininity")