GALLERY 2012

This project is a chic ensemble of body and gender politics on both personal and social levels. The artist has formed an engaged expression of her ideas and simultaneously facilitated a positive interactive experience for the participants. Additionally, there is a degree of follow through (both practical and conceptual) articulated through her donation of leftover materials to a local community organization working on similar issues.

It seems as though the project has had a successful dress-rehearsal and is now ready for the runway. The documentation provided in the submission is successful in illustrating the scope of the work, but it does little to excite the eye. Would incorporating other aesthetic strategies of documentation better communicate this work? I am not always a fan of Adbusters-esque tactics, but are there existing fashion/advertising formulas that could be effectively appropriated here to better reach a larger audience beyond the initial participants?

Based on the provided documentation, it is difficult to get an accurate sense of scale. Certainly, not all work needs to be experienced by huge numbers of people in order to be meaningful or effective; however, I wonder if there's room to consider increasing the scale and visibility of this work. It seems that the first audience would have been largely sympathetic to the aims of this work. How would it be received in a broader context such as at a shopping center? a high school? a flea market? a fashion show? This work strikes me as challenging, in a positive, interactive way that could be easily adapted with a bit of hard work and conviction.

The *perfectly basic* idea behind ‘What’s in Your Closet’ is what I found most interesting about this meaningful art project. It's form, shape and eventual effect rely entirely on the participants involved. This art piece has the ability to generate and reveal an abundance of highly-compelling sub-ideas and issues (corporate influence/power, materialism, self-identity, money, feminism, community, gender… just to name a few) in its own participants – almost like a mirror. The shape of the performance(?) is defined by the group as a whole: each individual having brought certain articles of clothing with entire backstories (both corporate and personal) behind what/why were chosen to be happily ejected from the owner's life.

Another interesting aspect to this work is how the piece is affected by a number of self-changing variables of the individuals involved in the group - such as where the event happens in the world, who/what type of people (young/old + men/women + gay/straight + socio-economic situations) and the conversations that are sparked and shared by these important differences. For participants, who engage with the piece in person/live, it is easy to imagine that being there must be unexpectedly empowering, possibly even life-changing. What seems, at first, like a ‘clothing swap’ likely evolves into an intimate and self-powering community - one that can reveal the silliness of what we are all doing to ourselves (by giving clothes power over our bodies and allowing corporations to shape our feelings of self-worth.
Audiences who view the documentation afterwards can also benefit and identify with these universal feelings. Their are overlapping voyeuristic aspects for non-participating viewers of 'What's in your Closet' that are similar to how the 'Post-Secret Project'http://www.postsecret.com/ somehow makes humans feel more 'human' and individuals not feel so alone. This is the power of good art!

This project/performance is very futile. It could be an app, it could be a website and/exchange all over the world. It might also be interesting to consider documenting the unique paths of *those* individual clothes and *those* individual people in an entirely new and secondary art project. Where did the person first see the item (in an ad? on TV? on a friend? on a stranger? etc) -> then: when they acquired it, how did buying it initially make them feel, what were their impulse expectations or associations -> then: how did feelings change once they had the item on -> why did they no longer want to wear it and what had the item become to them (an enemy? a sad thing? a reminder of something? a trigger? etc). These are the quick, pseudo-sad conversations most of us have ALONE regularly and typically when in a hurry - almost as if they are 'disposable' and reoccurring mini-problems, that we rarely take the time to truly inspect or understand. We just 'avoid' those items and/or that part of the closet and gravitate toward anything that doesn't make us feel like shit! The power of ‘What’s in Your Closet’ is that, when in a group - individuals are given the opportunity and forum to truly look at what is going on with this internalized and negative cycle of thought and liberate themselves from it, hopefully forever.