Extra Event II: Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram

The exhibit is a rather dimly light room in the Fowler Museum. Mannequins dressed in recycled medical material scatter the floor, each one with their own spotlight. The red velvet partitions only add to the ominous nature established by these eerie creations.

Proof of attendance, featuring couture fashion mannequins

Mannequin draped in hair

Bodybag with pills

Walking around the exhibit was an experience resembling that of the main

character in a horror movie. I was very much drawn to these alternatively couture mannequins, but at the same time, harbored the feeling that they might just come to life. They were chunky and inelegant from afar, but up close there was much admiration to be had for the attention to detail. The garments were usually uniform, made out of facemasks, hair net, and even just hair. Each garment was successfully constructed so that hundreds of these items were made to look
like one cohesive item.

Some of my favorites included a body bag decorated with multicolored pills, a hair mannequin, and a corset made from facemasks. The hair mannequin, although somewhat grotesque to me, really drew my attention for its use of different hair colors, types, and braids. The facemask corset was intriguing because Sundaram utilized these mass produced items, not made for aesthetics as much as for purpose, to construct an elegant piece of clothing. I appreciate how Sundaram challenges the idea of beauty by using recycled items that aren’t regarded as such, if not already associated with connotations of illness and death.

Facemask corset

While most artists experimenting with science have created art from scratch, Sundaram’s work explores art that is created from the leftovers of science. The Postmortem part of the exhibit is on the surface a follow up to the Gagawaka half. Once the mannequins have lived their “lives,” they proceed to be cut up and examined. However, Sundaram takes the hollowed case and adds to it, be it taping an entire doll on the back or just adding a limb, essentially creating a new life for the mannequin. This ambiguous duality of life and death manifests itself in science as well. In a more complex manifestation, Schrodinger’s cat paradox claims a cat in a box is both alive and dead, but reality causes the perception of the cat being alive or dead.

Collection of postmortem creations

I would encourage students to go see Making Strange because it challenges conventional ideas of beauty and blurs the boundaries of what we define as life and death.

"Making Strange: Gagawaka Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram | Fowler Museum at UCLA." Fowler Museum at UCLA. Web. 7 June 2015. <http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/making-strange-gagawaka-postmortem-vivan-sundaram#>.

"Making Strange: Gagawaka Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 7 June 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=286&v=jt8_2hKhv68>.

"Vivan Sundaram's "Making Strange" - April 19-September 6, 2015." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 7 June 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=84&v=9DRX4dlBA-w>.