The millenary technique of embroidery has always been linked to fashion. I’m not talking exclusively about the construction of clothes, but also about ornamentation. Many cultures perfected embroidery and made them a mark of their cultural asset. Although the styles and techniques may differ, thread and needles have been essential components to portray their history and shape their visions of the world. For instance, take the complex embroidery works of Mexican indigenous people with their unique figures and patterns, or Ukrainian flower motifs in their traditional outfits. Each technique and each culture embroiders the world and their own beliefs with their unique colors and materials.
Now, you might be asking what’s so relevant about an artist that uses embroidery and fashion as her tools? What makes this artist interesting is the way she uses fashion as a canvas to give it another meaning. Let me explain. Inge Jacobsen, an Irish artist and embroiderer (as she calls herself), has become famous for using fashion spreads and photographs to make her own art. This combination of elements redefines the original meaning or purpose of the spread.
The embroidery techniques she uses are varied and these give her creations a sense of texture and depth. Her use of thread and fashion photos range from full and detailed cross stitch magazine covers, to using the photos as canvases to create her own illustrations. But what’s the message she wants to convey?
In her most recent project, titled Consumed, she uses pages from fashion magazines and adds long pieces of thread in the models’ eyes and mouth. The results are unsettling surrealist images that create dark and enigmatic reinterpretations of fashion. One would think that these particular pieces are meant to criticise the fashion industry. However, as Jacobsen explains, it’s not about portraying a negative image of fashion, but actually showing the industry’s creative foundations and core. According to the artist, fashion is the industry that exploits and forces creativity the most, since it’s constantly looking for new audacious trends.
Jacobsen started her journey on embroidering and knitting when her grandmother passed away. In a desire to preserve and develop her abilities, she also found in these artisanal techniques, a way to honor and make relevant the folkloric importance of her predecessors’ culture. Having Danish ancestry, she found in thread and yarn the possibility of weaving new perspectives into old traditions. More importantly, with new technologies dominating every field of life, looking back at these type of customs and inserting them in new, relevant fields, such as fashion, is a way to secure our links to the past.
As she explains on her website, the right term to understand what she does and her artistic vision is hijacking. By appropriating finished products, fashion magazines, and photographs, she gives them new meanings and interpretations. Although the term, “appropriation” might have negative implications, she intends to reimagine the vision of the fashion world.***Art is more than being gifted by the muses or being born with artistic talents. The only thing we need is creativity, hard work, and a good idea; the rest comes along the journey. Especially nowadays, young artists have found in reinterpretation a way to create unique and innovative pieces through different disciplines and materials.
If you want to see more of Inge Jacobsen’s embroidered creations, don’t miss her Official Website.
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Source:
Hunger TV
