[ Segunda piel ]
[ "Second Skin"]
Performative fashion
Theater has played a decisive role in my life. It has allowed me to discover the creative capacities of my body and explore my own personality. When we create a character, our body comes to show itself as a mask that is also part of us. We give life to an alterego which is, in a way, ourselves. We adopt an avatar that is always linked to our body and our state of being.
The introspective processes that theater and perfoming has allowed me, have enabled me to carry the exploration of my own. Through it, I have been able to recognize the different selves that I carry inside of me and understand how I transform my body based on the personality I want to show. After all, each person is multiple and multifaceted: we are never just one.
This second skin seeks to show how the body is a tool for creation. During acting work, the body can become an inanimate object that is waiting to be inhabited to give life to a character. Furthermore, beyond the exploration of the body in performative creation, this piece speaks of the mutability of each person, of the pieces that form us, of the different selves that we inhabit.
For the development of this project I started by asking myself about the role of costume design in acting, performance, cinema, and theater. Hence, the concept of the avatar: the body as a medium for the creation of characters that we inhabit. From this moment, I began to explore my own relationship with theater performance, which I have practiced since middle school. Two important aspects stood out: first, the introspection that emerges through acting and, second, the capacity theater has of being either or both a dream and an escape. After defining the conceptual aspects of my work, search for its references, and making the final moodboard; I began my exploration with sketching. I defined the final design of the costume, one in which pieces of different textiles that imitated my skin would be joined by seams that were meant to look similar to sutures. In terms of my exploration of materials, I worked with natural and synthetic leather to reflect on the ideas of artifice and the real. I also included transparent mesh for its capacity to expose the body underneath. Finally, to elaborate the costume, I made sewing patterns, models, and molds of each part of the body, which I then divided into pieces to cut the fabrics and join them in what was a long and meditative process of hand sewing.
Special thanks to the professor Jorge Duque
who supported and guided the development of this
project for the class Construcción sobre el cuerpo.
