Duoduo Huang

Medium: organza fabric, plastic boning, iron wire, metal 

Size: Variable

This is a series of soft sculptures made from digital models, assisted by digital patterning techniques, using the structure of a woman's corset as a reference, supporting and shaping with boning. it was triggered by retracing the history of the corset. There is a very common criticism here that we are taught that it is a representation that shapes the female body, changes the abdominal organs, and is a kind of representation of the male gaze. But I stand on the opposite side of that argument, I verified to all this criticism came twenty years after the prevalent era of the corset. When it first appeared, it was not stigmatised and it was not pointed out that the corset was only associated with females, it was just a normal garment in the wardrobe. I supposed people doing sports in corsets, but also it wasn't a crazy thing to do in an era when it was prevalent, the work attempts to depict the curved, athletic body, breaking down the stigmatised facts of the historical process and the association of women with madness.

medium: velvet fabric, metal

size: variable

I investigated the history of mad women by reading through the archival images, I selected a series of formally similar poses and juxtaposed these images through my own re-enactment. It also traces the association between the ‘Maenad' meaning a female who exists in Greek mythology and is a frenzy running in the forests, and the archive of the iconography of female mental illness by Dr Charcot in the 18 century. What I try to present is a collision across time of these specific poses which exist in different times and cultural contexts with different interpretations as well, but in different times are accompanied by stigmatising indications that strongly represent the characteristics of female behaviour. The similarities between poses blur the meaning of madness women within established paradigms.