(us) - an entity that grows up with so little to look forward to, in terms of knowing what we might look like or embody.
(us) - who recreate carbon copies of empty promises of consumerism until we find ways to be liberated of this.
(us) - who realise that within time, our aesthetics become part of the mood boards of various trend forecasters - but only on the surface.
(us) - who remain relevant as consumers - at worst, thought of only as a trend.
(i) - seek to leave behind the constraints of all there was projected onto (us).
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Trained as a fashion designer and milliner (hatmaker), nathan c’ha works through gendered cliches of the body by reimagining illustrations from Atelier Bachwitz’s Chic Parisien look-book publications (1898-1939). Seeking out personhood where there wasn’t necessarily any intended, M’THEYDY endeavors to re-read and adapt historical fashion plates to a contemporary quest of representation.
The core tool of this is presented through a gentle shift of gender markers & markers of gender, which lend fluidity to people's readability. The latter, rather than connoting a sex recognised by the state, breaches out into painterly territory where it works to rebuild possibilities.
A speculative field of what-if’s, in M’THEYDY gender becomes a playground. In it, visitors are encouraged to drag and resize parts of nathan c'ha's drawings in order to build their own hat models and fashion idols. Through a series of dynamic screens, they’re granted consent to experiment with bodies and push boundaries.
Format - Series of 20 Interactive Websites
Material - Scanned Paintings, Photoshop Layers
Dimensions - Responsive, 9.28GB
Artist - nathan c’ha
Year - 2022
Artistic Director - Seth Weiner
Thanks - Tsai-Ju Wu, the Tiny Gay People in my Phone
The project is funded by the Kulturabteilung Stadt Wien (MA-7)
A Little History of the Wireless Icon (Eine kleine Geschichte des Wireless Icons) is an introduction into the iconographic history of wireless technologies.
English Version / German Version