Cut Outs and Suspended Seams, 2004
Cut fabric (clothes from MoMA museum employees), thread and starch
19 ft h x 60 ft w x 15 ft d
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York for the exhibitionProjects 81: Jean Shin
This site-specific project at MoMA QNS creates an abstract portrait of the museum’s staff with work clothes donated by its employees. By deconstructing the clothes into two parts—the cut-outs and the seams—the artist fashioned a mural and corresponding hanging sculpture that responded to the architecture of the space. In its fragmentation of the garments—and by proxy, the body—the piece visually breaks down the museum’s hierarchical structure, as the shirt of a janitor occupies the same space as that of the museum’s director.
