Where Is Every Body? Mannequins and Mounts /

Wandering Spirit: African Wax Prints

Avenir Museum

University Center for the Arts, East Building, 216 E. Lake Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523

May 15-December 17, 2021

Admission: Free

Review by Emily Zeek

Before endless scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, Americans thirsty for novelty would turn to daytime talk shows for a dose of the absurd. One example was The Donahue Show, hosted by Phil Donahue, which indulged Americans at home by introducing them to the outlandish, including the outrageous “club kids” who flocked to New York City in the 1980s in order to partake in a particularly hedonistic lifestyle of self-expression and partying. [1]

Among them was the young fashion guru RuPaul, who presented a radical ideology with a simple phrase: “You’re born naked, the rest is drag.” [2] Watching the interactions between the club kids, fully conscious of their social programming and the impact that has on fashion, along with a daytime talk show audience unconscious of their allegiance to 1980s and 1990s consumer fashion, is a spectacle worth searching for on the internet.

A view of the façade of the Avenir Museum at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Image by Emily Zeek.

To contemplate the impact and ideologies behind fashion more locally, the Avenir Museum in Fort Collins is a hidden gem among artistic institutions in the Front Range that is well worth visiting. Featuring a collection of 20,000 pieces of clothing, the museum is used in part to teach students in the Department of Design and Merchandising at Colorado State University (CSU) the specifics of tailoring, aesthetics, pattern-making, textile production, stitching, and fashion history. It’s also open to the public for limited hours during the week.

Taking RuPaul’s philosophy to the next level, students from last year’s graduating class—who curated the current exhibition in the museum’s Richard Blackwell Gallery—were forced to engage not simply with clothing as an aspect of expression, but with bodies themselves as purveyors of value in design and merchandising. The pandemic limited students’ access to the collection, so they chose to focus on the neglected history and study of mannequins and particularly on how their bodies influence our reception of the fashions we wear.

An installation view of the exhibition *Where Is Every Body? Mannequins and Mounts* at the Avenir Museum in Fort Collins. Image courtesy of Colorado State University.

The term mannequin is French for “the artist’s jointed model” and in Where Is Every Body? Mannequins and Mounts—a nod to body types, the sense of absence created by social distancing, and the ubiquity of clothing on bodies across the globe—the history of the mannequin is tied into the history of art. According to the exhibition texts, artists needing to study proportion and anatomy created sculptural bodily forms to study. Then the fashion and merchandising industry appropriated the forms to sell clothing in department stores.

Mannequins in a display titled “Why are these mannequins so white?” in the *Where Is Every Body? Mannequins and Mounts* exhibition at the Avenir Museum. Image by Emily Zeek.

Mannequin busts and a text and image panel in the *Where Is Every Body*? exhibition. Image by Emily Zeek.

The exhibition poses questions about the casual and unconscious expectations we have about beauty. For instance: why are mannequins almost always white, thin, and tall? What about clothing that is designed for full-bodied figures or older women with a less pert bust? And how do we evaluate and judge clothing based on the body of the wearer? As they say in the world of jazz, it’s the notes they don’t play that matter, and in this post-modern dismantling of fashion norms, it’s the clothing you don’t see on the mannequins which opens your mind to the endless artistic and expressive possibilities fashion truly provides.

Another popular guest on the Phil Donahue Show of the 1980s and ‘90s was consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who spent countless appearances informing viewers of the dangers of items pushed by greedy profiteers of capitalism (this was before regulations helped us see what was in our products). [3] Where Is Every Body? seems to double as a consumer education presentation, peeling back the metaphorical, superficial, and materialistic packaging of fashion to illustrate what’s behind our own personal labels.

Three mannequins that are part of a display questioning body size ideals in the *Where Is Every Body*? exhibition. Image by Emily Zeek.

In fact, it was the consumer rights movement that brought us many informative technologies we now take for granted like nutrition labels, seat belts in cars, and warning labels on cigarettes. [4] Today, consumer studies and home economics have become anachronisms (and perhaps not for the better considering the dangers posed to young people in the internet age). But forward-thinking fashion designers are beginning to incorporate a more body positive ethos on the runway and diverse models into their shows, which has been led in part by pioneering social justice activists like model Ashley Graham. [5]

To the surprise of a contemporary audience, the Department of Design and Merchandising at CSU is located in the College of Health and Human Sciences. This is a holdover from the land grant mission that focuses certain agriculturally-based universities on more “practical” studies. (And what’s more practical than critical thinking?) It’s also important to note that it was only 50 years ago that home economics and consumer studies departments in schools across the country included Do It Yourself instruction in areas such as food preparation, sewing, and nutrition. [6]

Fabric samples on display in the *Wandering Spirit: African Wax Prints* exhibition at the Avenir Museum. Image by Emily Zeek.

Meanwhile, across the hallway in the Avenir Museum Gallery, a traveling exhibition titled Wandering Spirit: African Wax Prints is reaching the end of its journey. Charting the history of African wax print fabrics through their unlikely origin in Indonesia, to the textile mass production factories of the Netherlands, to where they have received commercial success in West Africa, the exhibition tells a story of global trade, colonization, and commerce through the medium of fashion and textiles. This will be the last chance to see this fascinating exhibition before the collection permanently returns to its owners.

*King’s Chair Dress* in the exhibition *Wandering Spirit: African Wax Prints* at the Avenir Museum. Image courtesy of the Beatrice Benson Collection and ExhibitsUSA.

As a curator for the Avenir Museum, Megan Osborne puts the existential force of fashion into context. She explains: “Textiles are the first thing that touch the body when you are born and the last thing to touch your body upon death.” [7] Peeling back the layers of social conditioning and returning to the nakedness of the mannequin—and examining the fabrics that define culture, in the case of Wandering Spirit—is a metaphor for unpacking our unique identities and endogenous thoughts. In the process, we are able to break through the previously unseen indoctrination and power structures of mainstream society.

Emily Zeek is a transmedia and social practice artist from Littleton, Colorado who works with themes of feminism, sustainability, and anti-capitalism. She has a BFA in Transmedia Sculpture from the University of Colorado Denver and a BS in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines.

[1] “New York Club Kids” on The Phil Donahue Show in 1993: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llnSZqNGJtk.

[2] “RuPaul and Club Kids” on Geraldo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAPvdqaDupM.

[3] See https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/category/talk-show/.

[4] For more information on the Consumer Rights Movement, see: https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/economy/history-consumer-rights-improvements.

[5] See Ashley Graham’s website: http://www.ashleygraham.com/.

[6] Today, this might be considered too anarchistic and radical for conservative sensibilities—oh the irony! For more information, see the Education Encyclopedia: https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1976/Family-Consumer-Sciences-Education.html.

[7] From my phone interview with Avenir Museum Curator Megan Osborne.