WHAT IF..
‘WHAT IF’ is the name of my project in the Honours program. A program in which the 10 most talented students at AMFI get the unique opportunity to develop their own handwriting and develop a personal collection. I went back to my own childhood experiences. I always had struggles with finding comfort and placidity because of a panic disorder when I was young. The process of learning to deal with these feelings was for me really inspiring. I learned a lot from this period and that is why I took this as inspiration for the start of this project. A place that really helped me during this period was the forrest. So I tried to work out this feeling of comfort and protection though my inspiration of the forest.
CONCEPT
The perfect image that we create true social media destroys the true emotional connection we have because we can’t and won’t accept our faults that we are ashamed of. If we can not accept these faults within our identity we constantly have to live up to a perfect version of our self. We will never go beyond the expectations of our self and others and emotional trust will be gone. We are boxed in by shame and we will start to judge on a cognitive and competitive base and will only be pulled further away from each other. only if we are able to show courage and take the risk to put our self in a vulnerable position, we can free our self of the box of shame and gain true connection and involvement.
COLLECTION
In this collection I tried to show the battle between panic placidity. What kind of impact the nature has on your body and your mind and how it can protect you. I’m using real leafs and fabric made from real leafs to symbolize the improvidence. You will find a strangling top layer with plastic to symbolize the oppressive feeling of panic. But underneath this layer, underneath the battle, there is space, calmness and comfort. And maybe a feeling of home.
MATERIALS
A big part of the 'What If' collection is made out of real leaves. By treating the leaves in a specific way, through an own developed coating process, the leaf fabric got the same characteristics as leather.
To visualize the placidity part of the concept, material experiments with paper and acrylic paint were done to create a 'blank canvas' fabric.
In an attempt to re-create the real leafs, some experiments with plissé were done.
The rest of the fabrics experiments were done to visualise the feeling of panic.
SHOOT
