Marie Antoinette: Victim or Villain (Digital Collage) by Ingrid Mida October 2011 |
This is the launch of my creative process journal for a new project called ..... Marie Antoinette Slept Here.
The concept is a riff on celebrity culture. As a society, we seem so entranced by celebrities - what they wear, where they go, what they do. The tabloid newspapers and media sites that are fueled by the activities of celebrities are proof of that. And I have to admit I'm guilty of that too - with my ongoing fascination with Marie Antoinette. As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, it was those initial posts I wrote about the dress at the Royal Ontario Museum which initially sparked the popularity of my blog. I continue to get hits and emails about Marie Antoinette to this day.
My idea is to make a robe a la francasie that is inspired by the dress belonging to the ROM, but constructed in a post-modern way. I will imagine the dress as it was before alteration to recreate the exaggerated silhouette of the time using a mash up of fabrics that I purchased in Paris several years ago. This choice of fabric will be a form of textual poaching in that the meaning will be renegotiated to reflect a critique of culture.
While I am making the dress, I will use process work to consider how to strengthen the metaphor and develop it into a conceptual art piece. I will alter the dress in some way - perhaps through embroidery, paint or in some other intervention - to make more than just a dress. It will be a statement about celebrity culture and our fascination with this woman. I will post regular updates as I create this dress for a December 5 deadline.
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