Dress/Address [2021]
[20.10.21 - 20.11.21]
Our clothing and other forms of dress are often taken as the externalization of an internally coherent self, the outward manifestation of an inner destiny. Our 2021 Queer Exhibition Dress/Address features four artists, each exploring clothing as relational media, as elements within a social communication system that telegraphs belonging, cohabitations, in-jokes, claimed lineages and shared futurities. Dressing performs as address, in both the verb and the noun; as the media, syntax, phonemes and form of communicating with or communicating to one another; but also as identifying where we are communicating from - our habitation, domicile, departures and arrivals, and other local details that notate our place and situatedness. Dress/Address points to the communicative latency that has always existed in textile arts, the ways that clothing, accessories, and the associated demeanours, airs, poses, and other choreography are formative of the relations between one clothed person and another.
The four artists in Dress/Address - Gabriel Yeong Jun Bo, Samuel Xun, Shawna Wu and Shika - are all presenting at Grey Projects for the first time. The animated illustrations by Shika (based in Kuala Lumpur) on our social media highlight with a gently humour speculative outfits of new queer tribes, drawing from science fiction, pop culture, transfemme aesthetics and her growing up in Malaysia. Gabriel Yeong's installation of a changing room asks participants to explore, by trying on the five outfits Gabriel (based in Singapore) has styled, with accompanying accessories, if it's possible for queerness or cross-gender embodiments to be implicit designs rather than wearer-dependent. Shawna Wu (based in New York) has been featured in i-D, Vogue Singapore and has recently dressed Charli XCX. She called her presentations 'a ticket to a vibe', a vibe that is charged with eroticism and subcultural frisson. Her creations draw from knitwear, weaving, shibari, Chinese knotting and lingerie, but are in the end amalgamated into a sensibility that is both youth-centered, hyper-urban and gender-fluid. Samuel Xun (based in Singapore) presents two new wall-based works, each consistent and connected to outfits he has created in the years since his recent graduation from the Fashion Design & Textiles program at LASALLE College of the Arts. These works and those outfits reference the glossy surfaces of party culture and social media, and are strongly aligned with the arch camp and the bawdry found in cabaret and drag performances.
About the artists:
Yeong Jun Bo (he/she/they) is a creative who is a recent graduate from LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA(Hons) in Fashion Media and Industries. Trained in styling and creative direction, their work is heavily underpinned by fashion and social theories. Their research interests include identity and embodiment, stigma, and the affective aspects of dress, especially within the queer community. A community builder at heart, Yeong hopes that through his work, he is able to give a voice to underrepresented communities.
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Samuel Xun is a Singaporean multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer that challenges the idea of gender by cross-referencing the hegemonic framework of Singaporean queer identity with Euro-American lineages of camp and the queer aesthetic. His work includes soft-sculpture installation, textiles, graphic art, and fashion design informed by film, culture and personal narratives. His practice is deeply focused on ritualistic and reflective making processes that are aesthetically mediated. Emblematic of his culture, Xun's work questions the boundaries of how queerness invades the national rhetoric through physical representations like the clothed body, material culture, and digital manifestations like social media.
He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a Bachelor in Fashion Design & Textiles. In his final year, he was awarded the Swarovski Innovation Prize (2020) and was nominated for the McNally Award (2020). His work has also been published in VOGUE, The Straits Times, ELLE, Female, Harper’s Bazaar, L’OFFICIEL, MU/SE, MEGA, Nüyou (女友), Mensfolio, and elsewhere. His recent exhibitions include Only Losers Left Alive, Yeo Workshop, Singapore (2021), Creative Unions, Bernina Funan, Singapore Art Week (2021), The Foot Beneath the Flowers, NTU ADM Gallery, Singapore (2020), and Flights of Fancy, Art Now, Singapore (2020).
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Shawna Wu (b. Singapore) is a New York-based Taiwanese artist who works sensuously with mediums involving the body, textiles and garments. "A dressing is for a wound..." - Her work explores understandings of intimacy, empathy and cultural nuance through reimagined rituals and recontextualised traditional textile making craftsmanship. Her work is often installed in performative and experiential events that give breathing room for beauty, healing and being."
Her work has been worn by Lil Miquela, Kali Uchis, Charli XCX, Tinashe, Mia Kang, Sabrina Claudio, Eartheater, Patia of Patia's Fantasy World, and featured on Vogue, etc. Queer spaces saved her life and her pieces are also regularly worn by many of her friends, lovers, dolls, the gays. To her, the best looks and the most breathtaking people are not in the magazines - instead, they are in the club or on the streets.
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Shika is a visual artist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, whose work addresses the concerns of trans- and cross-cultural phenomena. Her work mostly deals with GIESO - Gender Identity and Expression, Sexual Orientation and also identity transcending boundaries.
Shika has participated in international exhibitions, such as the Moleskin exhibition Tokyo 2003, Singapore Bienniale 2013, AR-Safe Haven Helsinki programme co-organised by Perpetuum Mobile and HIAP and funded by the City of Helsinki curated by Perpetuum Mobile 2017, TransEuropa Madrid 2017, Kadist and Guangdong Times Museum: “Frequencies of Tradition” 2020/2021.