One More Week
The ROY G BIV CCAD Grads in the Galleries exhibit will run until Dec. 6. Keep your eyes peeled for 2020 exhibits featuring Rodney and/or Maharjan.
For those who have visited ROY G BIV Gallery in the last month, the fashionable braids and woven sculptures draped throughout the spaces are mystifying.
The display may seem collaborative, but it’s actually just complementary. The braided works, made by Erica Rodney, and the woven pieces, created by Anita Maharjan, are part of the final Columbus College of Art and Design series CCAD Grads in the Galleries: Celebrating 140 years of creative excellence.
Grandeur Garments
With a bachelor’s degree in fashion design and a master’s degree in fine arts, Rodney’s created monochromatic garments draped in braided hair to express more than a single message.
“I think we get a lot of things wrong because we try to pinpoint one thing and say, ‘Oh, that’s the problem,’ but it’s not like that. Just like us; we’re complicated creatures,” Rodney says. “I’m trying to be a better fashion designer, and I have no choice but to talk about the things that I think are problems.”
Rodney wanted to explore textures that she could easily manipulate. She comes from generations of braiders; the hair she uses represents her own culture.
“Hair has been a big part of our lives as black women,” she says. “And when I decided to use the hair I was like, ‘Yes, this is fine arts and fashion. This is what I’ve been feeling for so long.’”
The fabric is cut clean and rather simplistic, bringing attention to the unique choice of hair. This also signifies the exploration of fashion and encourages others to think twice about how they represent their second skin: clothing.
“We’re not really connected to our clothes; we just pick (clothes) out of the barrel that are already made,” Rodney says. “We have to do better with what we’re wearing. It should be more personal, slow and more intentional.”
But what really gets Rodney fired up is the unsustainability of the fast-fashion, ready-to-wear industry. According to CBS News, 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emission is created annually because of textiles production – and that’s just the beginning. Rodney talks about Xintang, China, where the water turned blue because of pollution from the manufacture of denim jeans, and the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse, where more than 1,000 workers died in a classified sweatshop.
“I don’t feel comfortable making ready-to-wear. It feels wrong. It’s dead wrong,” she says. “This is something I can’t look away from and this is definitely my fight. My work is politically charged, and it has a lot to do with social issues and struggles.”
Rodney talks about her piece called Insecurity, a short dress entirely made of braids, held up by the braids in the model’s hair. The garment symbolizes the weight people may feel in a world where climate change issues, social disputes and political unrest cause uncertainty.
“Even though there are so many reasons and context behind my work, I’m really just trying to be the change that I want to see,” Rodney says. “I feel so desperate to do something different with fashion. … This is who I am. I can’t run from it.”
Weaving Cultures
Maharjan is all about breaking the rules.
At 18 years old, she was the first member of her family to leave her home country of Nepal for the U.S. to study art – which she says isn’t common, as most Nepalis immigrate to study medicine or I.T. She also took her cultural skill of weaving and turned it into an art form, something her family doesn’t always understand.
But all her rule-breaking led to her current series: woven pieces comprised of plastic, fabric and wax that express and explore her multicultural background.
“I’m so fortunate to be here; weaving has been a bridge for me to fill in that gap,” Maharjan says, “but at the same time, the question ‘where is home?’ is very loaded.”
The largest piece Maharjan is presenting at ROY G BIV is The Wall. The woven, sculpture-like artwork with intentional holes and wavy textures was created around the 2016 election, thus the name. It’s a representation of Maharjan’s multicultural identity and others who can relate. The outward-facing part features a transparent coat of white paint, while the backside is the raw, mostly brown plastic.
“Whatever is (happening) around you will affect your work, and artists have to speak up about feelings and current situations,” Maharjan says. “This is the first time I applied the white to have that façade, and it’s how I see myself so blended to this culture.”
As for the plastic and fabric Maharjan uses, it’s all about showcasing possibilities.
“It’s just like, ‘Oh, we can use discarded material like this.’ It’s not about just buying the expensive stuff to make artwork,” she says. “I feel here, it’s such a consumerist society; we use so much, so much. Back home, it’s opposite. We use very limited.”
Her weaving work also helps keep her cultural tradition alive. Maharjan says she recently went back home and discovered that only older women still weave, as younger women are now taking on office jobs and gaining more rights.
“It’s a good part that there is a lot of development, and I’m very happy for those women,” she says. “At the same time, the weaving is going to be a history, once upon a time story. So being able to keep that alive and also introduce that into Western culture is a lot for my people.”
Lydia Freudenberg is an editor. Feedback welcome at lfreudenberg@cityscenemediagroup.com.
[GB1]Did she actually say “defiantly,” or should this be “definitely?”
