1–800

This week, the Yale Herald asked Molly Ono, ES ’20, to share an artist statement explaining her most recent body of textile work.

The basis of these pieces is a process of consumer-based accumulation within a capitalist system. This is not unique to these objects, and, in fact, most pieces of artwork originate from bought materials, except for art derived from found materials — a radical yet perhaps unsung act.

Here, I decided to take this idea to a blunt and potentially ugly extreme, purchasing textile material and presenting the results in an “art” context with varying degrees of intervention. What does it mean for a skimpy halter top from Urban Outfitters to hang on the wall like a sculpture, tags still skewered into the stitches emblazoned with “SALE: $9.99?” The viewer is torn between treating it like a $9.99 piece of clothing and a piece of art. The context shifts the meaning, but not fully nor permanently; to accept the pieces as one or the other is defeating the purpose. Instead, the pieces are in a suspension of viscose-cotton-silk-muslin-rhinestone limbo, firmly pressed (sometimes stretched, and certainly impaled to) the wall like dissected specimen waiting to be probed or undergo surgery.

And in this way, there is hope: just as there is a narrative of clinical, apathetic experimentation, there also exists a chance of recovery and convalescence — the sale voided, the Urban Outfitters obliterated.