Cloth is something that we each come into contact with multiple times daily. Whether it’s with the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep on, the chairs and couches we sit on, the towels we clean our selves and our environment with, cloth surrounds us. The making of cloth is a long process that involves many different people in many different places. It starts with material: cotton, flax, sheep, lama, alpaca, or something synthetic. But more often than not the material is animal or from the ground, planted just like our food or living just like us. This source then gets processed meaning washed, carded, and spun into yarn. The yarn then gets sent to a mill where people turn these strings into viable fabric. Next it gets sent to a factory to be cut and sewn into a product for our consumption.
The United States is the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world while roughly only 2.5% of the clothing purchased in the US is actually manufactured in the US. An American buys an average of 64 items of clothing a year meaning a little over one piece each week. That means for each item of clothing, all the process are imbedded into that and so many different people in so many often far away places have touched each piece. These people are more often than not subjected to horrible working conditions from pesticides in cotton to taking workers passports so workers cannot physically leave the factory, to deceitful wages given to these people for their literal blood, sweat, and tears that went in to manufacturing a garment for your consumption. On top of that more that 70% of the labor force of the garment industry is female and young. The garment industry is taking advantage of people at all levels in order to provide you with your $15 skinny jeans, $7 crop top, and $4 underwear.
In Gallery Apostrophe'S (http://www.galleryapostrophe-s.com/) I set up my own shearing facility, my mill, and my factory. I slept, ate, worked, read, and danced in the space for four days. In this piece, I am sitting with all of this horrific information and the consciousness that I buy into this system while creating a “garment” that has the smallest slavery and carbon footprint that I can by using my own hair for material and hands for labor. I lived in the gallery to embody how often times in sweatshops, workers live, eat, and work in the same building. This was an active exploration into the process of making and the connections between animal, laborer, and consumer. I invited people to participate by cutting off their own tags on their clothing and placing them on a map in order to connect the consumer with the process. They were also invited come during the week to observe the process as well as on the reception night where the final product was unveiled.
The United States is the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world while roughly only 2.5% of the clothing purchased in the US is actually manufactured in the US. An American buys an average of 64 items of clothing a year meaning a little over one piece each week. That means for each item of clothing, all the process are imbedded into that and so many different people in so many often far away places have touched each piece. These people are more often than not subjected to horrible working conditions from pesticides in cotton to taking workers passports so workers cannot physically leave the factory, to deceitful wages given to these people for their literal blood, sweat, and tears that went in to manufacturing a garment for your consumption. On top of that more that 70% of the labor force of the garment industry is female and young. The garment industry is taking advantage of people at all levels in order to provide you with your $15 skinny jeans, $7 crop top, and $4 underwear.
In Gallery Apostrophe'S (http://www.galleryapostrophe-s.com/) I set up my own shearing facility, my mill, and my factory. I slept, ate, worked, read, and danced in the space for four days. In this piece, I am sitting with all of this horrific information and the consciousness that I buy into this system while creating a “garment” that has the smallest slavery and carbon footprint that I can by using my own hair for material and hands for labor. I lived in the gallery to embody how often times in sweatshops, workers live, eat, and work in the same building. This was an active exploration into the process of making and the connections between animal, laborer, and consumer. I invited people to participate by cutting off their own tags on their clothing and placing them on a map in order to connect the consumer with the process. They were also invited come during the week to observe the process as well as on the reception night where the final product was unveiled.