Chapter 3 & 4

                                         Chapter 4: Experimental University 

“The name subRosa is meant to honor other politically charged “Rosas” of history, including Rosa Luxemberg, Rosalind Franklin, Rosa Parks, and Rosie the Riveter” 

(Art Project)

The project focuses on social and political issues for women employed in both localities, [and demonstrates the often invisible and unexpected connections that globalization of production creates between geographically separated communities.  Sub-rosa is a mutable (cyber)feminist art collective combining art, social activism and politics to explore and critique the intersections of information and bio technologies on women’s bodies, lives and work. Since its founding in 1998, subRosa has developed situated, trans-disciplinary, performative, and discursive practices that create open-ended environments where participants engage with objects, texts, digital technologies, and critical learning experiences interacting with each other and the artists.

“Is naturalness possible in the world today, and what do we mean when we say natural and organic” (Quote)

This quote is based on a project that focuses on issues with food production.

 Free Range Grain was a live, performative action that used basic molecular biology techniques to test for genetically modified food in the global food trade. Critical Art Ensemble wanted this interventionist performance to demonstrate how the “smooth space” of global trade enables the very “contaminations” the authorities say it guards against. CAE/da Costa/Shyu constructed a portable, public lab to test foods for common genetic modifications. Members of the public brought them foods that they found suspect for whatever reason, and they tested them over a 72-hour period to see if their suspicions were justified.

“Puett turned an abandoned building in Charleston into an operating contemporary clothing factory” (Quote)

J. Morgan Puett is an American fashion designer and interdisciplinary contemporary artist. She first became known for her fashion designs and later for her contemporary art practice incorporating fashion. Her company produces suits. During its hours of operation , a tailor will take orders and fit and sew suits for willing and paying customers. 

Chapter 3: Ready to Wear

Yomango founded in 2003

(Art Project)

Yomango is a shoplifting movement that originated in Barcelona in 2002. It is billed as an anti-consumer lifestyle. It gained publicity when clothes were stolen from a store, put on and worn back to the store in a "fashion show". Some people claim that it is intended to be a parody of the Mango clothing line popular in Europe. However, Yomango consider themselves as an informal community aimed at diffusing practices of social disobedience. The kind of shoplifting promoted by Yomango may even be a tactic of direct re-appropriation and redistribution of wealth.

“This work combines architectural elements with basic clothing, invoking issues of community, shelter and mobility” (Quote)

Lucy Orta (1966), a British fashion designer turned contemporary artist. Her works are something in between body and architecture, fashion and art, that perfectly draw upon urgent social and environmental concerns. She creates artworks that confront social issues such as refugees, population control, and water pollution. Throughout the decade, she staged a series of interventions to challenge acts of social disappearance and to render the invisible populations visible once more, signaling out social issues that the media were ignoring at that time.

“Ruben Ortiz-Torres slightly altered the well known insignias on an array of baseball hats to produce new, culturally charged meaning” (Quote)

Mexican postmodernist artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres creates work that explores social and aesthetic cross-cultural exchange. Ortiz-Torres' iconic baseball hats that evolved from everyday objects into powerful statements of our time, most notably an L.A. Kings hat with the addition of the word "Rodney'' on the front of the hat.  Though Rubén Ortiz-Torres’s interests and techniques have varied widely over the course of his career, they always reflect the environments that have shaped his identity.