New costumes

Brazilian artist Laura Lima’s (b. 1971) work frequently centres the body, and seeks to understand the different forms of governance which determine its behaviour through a practice which spans performance, installation, video and sculpture. Her 2007 work, New Costumes did so through the creation of a physical architectural and commercial space in the gallery: a shop which housed wearable sculptures made from transparent vinyl, activated upon wear by the work’s viewers. Formed variously so as to produce a variety of effects that ranged from the restriction of movement to the establishment of social relations between persons through interconnecting garments, all of the works had an instructional nature which worked to highlight the more subtle ways in which codes of behaviour might be manipulated or shaped on a more everyday level.

She says of the work, “the word “costume” suggests that one costume [custom] over another might generate different ways of thinking and acting. And I am not talking about overlaying clothes or wearing disguises, but of an architecture of the senses. The work is deliberately set up as a commonplace clothing store. As they handle the pieces, even though assistants instruct them on how they should wear them, the users invariably disobey the orders at some point and make up a new prescription. That is due to the fact that my costumes are not necessarily comfortable or easy to wear. Anyway, that interiorisation interests me less than the verbs “to build”, “to undo” and “to overlay” conjugated in this set of new social principles which I call “architecture”.”

–Elsa Gray