Meridith McNeal

Well Dressed

Nathan Cummings Foundation
475 Tenth Avenue, 14th Floor
New York, NY 10018

viewing hours
9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday by appointment.
Please call Karen Garrett, (212) 787-7300, ext. 206.
directions
A l C l E train to 34th Street

Meridith McNeal, Well Dressed installation view, Nathan Cummings Foundation

Clothing has a distinct function beyond basic protection from the elements. In particular, it functions on a social level. A person can dress to identify with a group or get lost in the crowd; assert his/her individuality or to turn heads. On the flip side, clothing and adornments can provoke everything from envy and adulation to discrimination and fear. Well Dressed addresses the cultural, historical, spiritual and economic implications of attire.

Clothing and accessories are almost always marketed as gender specific. Metalsmith Susan Kingsley takes on issues of identity, gender, and social relationships as she beautifully mocks our accepted conventions and shuffles in a wild card of erotic aesthetics. Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s macho designer jeans revive the codpiece as an element of fashion apparel for the modern male. Larry Krone embraces the so-called feminine arts of handcrafting: quilted, beaded, and sequined garments with his men’s BVD Underpants of Many Colors. Andy Yoder’s enormous wingtips and bowtie made of licorice are both a formidable symbol of the artists’ father and a vaguely frightening but humorous comment on the enormity of becoming a father. Sonya Clark’s sculpted coiffures are inspired by a fascination with the creative handwork of women that perpetuates a community's common memories and rituals.

In the days before globalization, perhaps even more than now, clothing was an important cultural marker that expressed not only geographic origin but also personal identity. Xenobia Bailey explains her crocheted pieces “illustrate a physical tribute to my ancestral lineage, known and unknown, with whom I share flesh, blood and bone since the beginning of time.” From a contemporary cultural lens, interior Alaskan artist Laura C. Hewitt’s work is influenced by the dichotomies and juxtapositions of rural Alaskan living. Her materials, the objects of her daily life, evoke the magical within the mundane. Nick Cave addresses social and political issues in his work. Cave’s “Sound Suits” are his response to being a black male in America. The pieces are made as disguise and protection against the prejudices he encounters daily.

If the body is the vessel for the soul, then it follows that clothing is, in a way, the accoutrement of the spirit. Lesley Dill thinks of clothing as an emotional boundary between the body and the universe — garments as housing for the body, which in turn is housing for the soul. May Chan’s pieces are meditations created through personal rituals such as collecting and utilizing the remnants of daily life like notebook paper, and her own hair collected after showers from which she formed the shoe sculptures on view.

Museums often sprinkle period rooms with period costumes, and why not? Garments tell a very clear story about the past. June Gaddy’s collaged sculptures, which begin with vintage shoes, tell the remarkable and inspiring story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the subsequent desegregation of public busses. Teri Greeves’ intricately beaded wearable sneakers explore couture and the istorical role of fashion in Native American culture — where every garment was an individually made personal creation. Susan Newmark’s collage work fuses traditional dress patterns from the 1950’s with indiscrete Japanese Anime
and “Tijuana Bible” comics created in the 1930’s for men. Created for Keeping Room, a site-specific installation located in a 19th century row house, Meridith McNeal’s empty dress silhouettes cut from vintage wallpaper and life-size period dress made of contemporary subway maps invite the viewer to step back in time.

Economic concerns are inexorably interwoven into the dialogue about wearables. Joseph Rodríguez’s photographs of both male and female Mexican streetwalkers allow for a glimpse of a culture where what one wears to entice is a matter of survival. Zoë Sheehan Saldaña creates handmade duplicates of mass-produced, inexpensive commercial items. In her multi-layered work Saldaña continues the process by reintroducing the duplicate into the consumer landscape in some way. Mark Newport contemplates the role of family provider through his knitted personal superhero persona. Cheryl Yun’s work speaks of religious, political and economic concerns in a particularly pointed fashion as the artist contrasts the content with a form that speaks of the superficiality and transience of fashion and consumer culture.

Finally, we get to working our own personal mojo. In a deadly version of the perennial charm bracelet, Christy Rupp replaces the familiar Eiffel Towers and ballet slippers with glass beads in the forms of common viruses including Rabies, Influenza, Typhoid, Ebola and HIV. Tiffany Ludwig and Renee Piechocki, as the artists collective team known as Two Girls Working, ask the question of their participants: What do you wear that makes you feel powerful? This compelling participatory project ignites conversations about the meaning and expression of power. The artists included in this exhibition have reaffirmed that clothing and adornment are indeed a universal form of self-expression and that each of us hold a particular vision of what constitutes Well Dressed. What does your Power Suit look like?