Emotional Objects

Timeframe: 2018-2020

This extended body of practice was generated during a fellowship at the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2018-19) and an artist’s residency at Bard Graduate Center, New York (2019- 2020). At a time when fashion exhibitions play an increasingly important role in both cultural institutions and the fashion industry and as museums reframe their clothing collections as ‘fashion’ rather than ‘costume’, this research examines the position of damaged garments in museum collections. It asks how in a field where absent bodies and narratives are increasingly understood as problematic, engagement with the traces of use and repair can make present objects which would otherwise be excluded from view. The work comprises of an artist’s film and a series of polaroid’s and cyanotype prints shot in The Costume Institute archive, and a series of auto-ethnographic writings. The research has been disseminated in a variety of ways: exhibition, catalogue, and open studio, the visual essay “Affect and Sensation” (Fashion Studies Vol. 3. 2020) and a series of conference presentations.

https://www.ellensampson.com/emotional-objects