 |
Gallery Exhibitions  Narratives / Blogs |
 |
 |
|
|
|
it/EQ: Ethan Shoshan and Carlo Quispe | New York, NY According to the folk tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson: Once upon a time there was a vain Emperor and it was known far and wide that he was obsessed with fashion and the way he looked. One day two scoundrels came to the palace and announced they were the best weavers in the world and offered to make the emperor a new outfit that was completely and utterly one of a kind and just for him. The outfit also had the added bonus of being invisible to anyone who could not appreciate the quality of the garment. Of course the Emperor could not say no to this and had the scoundrels start right away. After months of working and taking the emperor for all he was worth, the two scoundrels presented the new outfit to the Emperor. The Emperor was shocked when he could not see the outfit, he was a connoisseur of fashion! He appreciated the piece, yet he could not see it. Of course the emperor kept this thought to himself, and decided to have a parade to introduce this new garment to his loyal subjects and see once and for all who was too stupid to appreciate good fashion. During the parade, everyone was shocked to see the Emperor standing there in nothing, but no one said a thing because they didn’t want the emperor to think they were ignorant, until finally a little boy shouted out “He’s naked!” This got the villagers talking and finally everyone started yelling out, “He’s naked! He has no clothes on!” and things of that nature. Finally the Emperor retreated to his palace realizing he had been had and that the two scoundrels had made off with a lot of his gold. New York based artists, Ethan Shoshan and Carlos Quispe used this story as the background for their 2005 fashion show, The Emperor’s Première, performed at Le Petit Versailles, a community garden in New York. Shoshan and Quispe work together as it/EQ, a community based collaborative, dedicated to building ties between local artists and activists, providing multicultural exchanges, and bringing visibility to minority or underrepresented people. For the fashion show, cross dressed models walked on stage in outfits handmade by Shoshan and Quispe. All of the costumes were constructed using recycled materials found on the streets and the style of each outfit represented characteristics of the wearer interwoven with ideas of subversive relationships to power. In the fourteen minute video documentation of the event, we are introduced to Pacha Mama, Fairy Warrior, Funeral Belly dancer, Mistress of Beckoning, Superwoman, Coked-out, drug dealin’ trannie from Beverly Hills, and many more. Each model was escorted on stage by a camouflage-clad escort and performed a routine unique to the character they embodied. The fashions were shown by gender-diverse models with male, female, and intersex performers taking the stage. Male models were clothed in styles usually intended to cover the female body, while performing the feminine role on stage. Their female roles were further spotlighted by the relationship to their military escorts; clothed in feminine identity, the models were fragile and in need of protection but as males performing the female role their double gender identity more than doubled their vulnerability. Were the escorts protecting or threatening their charges? Are gender and power-coded outfits as illusionary as the Emperor’s new clothes? - by Crystal Atry
|
