From the parlour to the forum: how dress-art unsettles place and space

Dresses are usually created to clothe bodies, to be worn, to hide a body, to reveal parts of a body or cause a body to move in a particular way due to weight or restrictions. Dresses can represent particular cultures, identities or personas. Dresses in or as art (dress-art) are shifted from their intentions for actual bodies to material and aesthetic transformations. Examples of dress-art, created by eight different artists around the world, are discussed. Space and place theories, dress scholarship, embodiment and ideas from both Karen Barad and Judith Butler frame the discussion. Cultural, social and material insights along with self and identity are explored with reference to senses of place, space and identity for the artist, the viewer and the artworks themselves. Artists discussed in this chapter have engaged form, cultural and material aspects of dresses and presented or performed these works and in doing so, offered an opportunity to discuss how dress-art unsettles place and space. Some examples include dress-art that features dresses without bodies wearing them, dresses that suggest bodily space in its physical form but are more about embodied, imagined form, empty space or an absence or a void of the body the dress is designed to encase, cover or adorn.