Portal
Natalie Purschwitz

“Portal” is an otherworldly landscape of sculptural garments. The viewer is transported to an uncanny time and place. There is a sense of futurism and yet it seems somehow antiquated, like a vision of the future from another time and place: a parallel universe. The garments and room design make reference to specific historical moments and cultural confluences. As an artist interested in how clothing functions, both as a culture-specific language and as a material in a visual art context, my research and curiosity for this work lies in the convergence of these parallel streams and the possibility of what can happen in the space of overlap.
My specific lines of research for this work include cross-cultural clothing and design overlap from the 1920s, the 1960s and present day as well as clothing as a vehicle to transport/transform the wearer. In addition, I am looking at Jaques Lacan’s late 1960’s concept of the “mirror stage”, Roland Barthes’ late 1960s semiological examination of the language of fashion, and the use of various historical and current viewing devices such as the periscope, the kaleidoscope and the Persian Shahre Farang as instruments that shift our perspective and thus, our understanding of the world.