(Pics) The Life Of Clothes

As anyone who’s ever cleaned a closet, basement, or attic knows – things (especially clothes), pile up quickly. Items which we no longer need sadly more often than not end up in a long forgotten box or pile. Pieces we once treasured or were part of our daily existence can easily get filed away or lost in the ether of a messy house. However, it’s the part of ourselves that remains in them which most interests artist Christian Boltanski, who recently created the installation Personnes within the spacious walls of Hangar Bicocca in Milan, filling it with 30 tons of clothes. According to the artist, these pieces will act as  a sort of metonymy indicating their previous owners.  Instead of a pile of old and weathered clothes, Boltanski sees no less than 500.000 people. However, these clothes don’t get to hang in repose for very long- suspended above the pile a crane snatches an item, highlighting it for a second, and then lets it fall  where it may.

One take on the piece by Abitare Magazine is that this installation represents:

“The hand of Fate; or rather, for the people who believe in God, maybe it is just a divine finger that gives life and takes it away. And also a mechanic limb that relentlessly and without emotions carves remains of existences, maybe not yet ended – we can’t know it –that with that skirt or that shirt left, or lost part of himself or herself.”

However, the theme of leaving behind a part of oneself in stationary objects is not a new visual in art.  At the Holocaust Museum in DC a room has been filled with 4,000 shoes of those who had perished in the concentration camps with the accompanying inscription:

“We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, And because we are only made of fabric and leather And not of blood and flesh, Each one of us avoided the hellfire”

This bittersweet passage is meant to invoke the souls of those lost through the possessions that they have left behind. Similarly, the museum at Ellis Island in NYC has an exhibit of trunks and suitcases, abandoned by immigrants after they had come to America.  While this concept of personifying objects is nothing new, what makes Boltanski’s piece so timely is that with a cursory glance you could easily imagine it as the back of any clothing factory or buy-by-the-pound vintage store internationally. These are places where clothing is easily made and then forgotten about, and in rare instances was part of a family heritage but  now is left with a millions of other fibers. However, this may be being too harsh on those who have given away the items. If an article of clothing has memory and emotional value sometimes this may be the very reason we want to rid ourselves of it, because after all- who really wants a closet filled to the brim with history?

Hangar Bicocca

Abitare Magazine: “The Life of Clothes”