My Visit to MAD

Upon visiting MAD, I decided to start at the top of the museum and work my way down, seeing"Second Lives:Remixing the Ordinary" as well as the other exhibits. The Second Lives exhibit was really interesting. It was about taking objects created for a specific function and using it in a different way than it was originally intended.

The piece that struck me the most at first was "Portrait of a Textile Worker" by Terese Agnew.



This piece is made up of 30,000 different designer labels all stitched together. The designer was trying to show the unseen worker behind the clothing. When we see designer clothing, the designer name/label is prominent and made obvious to us, yet how often do we think of the actual person who literally made and put together the clothing? I find this particularly interesting since so many of us make clothing and other things, yet so often the "big name" on an item is all that is noticed.

Here is a close-up detail of part of it:


A lot of the things from the exhibit reminded me of the "Simply Droog" exhibit I saw at MAD (back when it was across from MoMA) a few years ago. I even recognized one of the pieces that was in that show, as well as being at MoMA for a bit afterwards.

The particular piece it reminds me of is called "Labeled" by Claudia Linders and includes user participation in the project called "Unlabeled." Linders invites people to cut off the designer labels off their clothing and donate them to her, where she makes a new piece of all the designer labels, going on the theme of label importance to people. Will your Chanel dress be the same without the label? It's an interesting thought. Here is what she made with the labels...



Check out the project and the progress at http://www.labeled.nl/