CARLA FERNANDEZ 'THE BAREFOOT DESIGNER' AT THE ISABELLA GARDNER MUSEUM IN BOSTON

Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston

headware by artist Pedro Reyes

a series of publications including Carla Fernandez: The Barefoot Designer: A Handbook

a timeline of Carla's life and work

activation of the clothing in dance performance by Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener

an indigenous textile weaving workshop in the garden

Carla Fernandez, at her exhibition at the Isabella Gardner Museum


Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer:
A Passion for Radical Design and Community
April 17 to September 1st, 2014

Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community explored the traditions and techniques of indigenous Mexican artisans and how they can be applied to modern fashion and styles.

Carla Fernández has gained international recognition for her extraordinary approach to documenting and preserving the rich textile heritage of Mexico's indigenous communities by transforming it into beautiful contemporary clothing, and proving tradition is anything but static.

This first-ever fashion exhibition at the Gardner Museum explored the development of a new language in visual design that Fernández has built over two decades. She used a method called "the Square Root" based on the Mexican tradition of making clothing from squares and rectangles. This process emphasizes forms of fabric and delicate, thoughtful construction based on whole fabric, as opposed to cutting in curves and molding to the body.

The Barefoot Designer was multi-faceted exhibition consisting of garments, textiles, drawings, photographs, performance, video, workshops and source materials demonstrating Fernández's multi-layered design process. A key component of that process is her design workshop Taller Flora, a mobile laboratory that collaborates with Mexico's indigenous communities, a sustainable business model based on close collaboration with and recognition of local knowledge and talent. During her career, Fernández has worked with many indigenous communities throughout Mexico. The exhibition highlighted the styles and techniques of five states: Chiapas, Yucatan, Campeche, the State of Mexico and Mexico City.

Mobility and collaboration could be seen and felt throughout the exhibition: in its installation, multiple films and monthly dance performances, as well as workshops for the public. The garments and mannequins were positioned on life-sized, mobile displays. Fernández also activated the garments through a live and filmed dance performance by dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, bringing to life the notion of "clothing as canvas." The exhibition included short process videos of weavers, embroiderers, and carpenters by photographer and filmmaker Ramiro Chaves, as well as fashion films produced by Chaves in New York City, Boston and Mexico City. A series of fashion photos by photographer Graciela Iturbide will be on view. A large workshop table added a hands-on visitor experience to the exhibition, with a variety of workshops scheduled. Fernández ran a two-day clothing workshop as well as workshops with the Gardner's School and Community Partnership Programs.

"I want people to understand that you can find happiness many different ways, and one way is by creating goods by hand and making things unique to the artist," Fernández said. "Discovering the process helps people to understand how these different worlds work, because you fall in love with the artisan, and then you fall in love with the piece. You can create a whole economy based on the artists, and how their work is made."

Carla Fernández (b. 1973 Mexico) has developed a successful enterprise wherein the fashion industry and the handmade crafts of Mexico become compatible. The driving force of her strategy consists of reinterpreting the complex system of Mexican indigenous clothing through direct cooperation with artisans. She has conducted over 10 years of research in which she cataloged hundreds of garment designs, including ancient Mayan and Aztec designs and other pre-Hispanic traditions, some at risk of being lost. As a result of this comprehensive research, she founded Taller Flora A.C., a traveling workshop laboratory that partners with communities throughout Mexico—especially women cooperatives that produce handmade textiles and clothing—to preserve these designs. Carla Fernández's label have a fresh and innovative style relying on this untapped inventory of techniques, translating them into two lines of clothing to ensure a steady enterprise: couture to accommodate the slower techniques, and a prêt-a-porter line of mass-produced items using these designs and motifs.

This innovative system has allowed Fernández and her workshop to integrate as many as 1,000 artisans while keeping pace with the speed of fashion. By supporting their immense creativity, handwork and ideas, she seeks to prevent the extinction of the Mexican textile tradition, while meeting the demands of the market. The artist believes that only radical contemporary design will prevent the extinction of craftsmanship. In 2010, Carla Fernandez was listed by Quién magazine as one of the 50 people who bring Mexico forward, and has been recognized as “Young Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year” by the British Council. In 2013, Ms. Fernandez is one of 11 worldwide recipients of the Prince Claus Award based in Amsterdam, which recognizes artists whose cultural actions have a positive impact on the development of their societies.

http://www.carlafernandez.com/

http://www.gardnermuseum.org/contemporary_art/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/carla_fernandez_the_barefoot_designer

'CGEM: NOTES ON EMANCIPATION' CURATED BY MARIA INES RODRIGUEZ AT MUSAC

exhibition view

Carla Fernández, Papeles de Trabajo, Colección Primavera Verano, 2011 (Pop-Up Store)


Carolina Caycedo, Banners, 2007-2010

Adriana Lara, 5, From the Series Números (Ambiguación), Video, 2010

Carolina Caycedo, Caminemos Junt@s, 2010, Collective ownership tent

Judi Werthein, Salsipuedes / Exitifyoucan, 2010, Vinyl signs

CGEM: Notes on Emancipation
Curated by María Inés Rodríguez
with Carolina Caycedo (London, UK,1978), Carla Fernández (Saltillo, Coah, Mexico, 1973), Adriana Lara (Mexico City, Mexico, 1978) and Judi Werthein (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973).
October 23rd 2010 – January 9th 2011

'CGEM: Notes on Emancipation' presents a selection of pieces collaboratively produced by artists with different associations and local groups. Emancipation, in the broadest sense of the term, refers to any action that allows a person or a group of people to attain a state of autonomy by succeeding in freeing themselves from some authority or power to which they are subjected. Echoing the commemoration of the historical bicentenaries of independence of Latin American countries, the exhibition presents a series of artists who have produced a body of work focusing on the issues around emancipation. Over the past two hundred years great changes have shaken the Latin American continent. The transformations on political, social, economic and cultural levels, and their repercussions in the public sphere, have been topics of analysis on the part of experts, yet they also make for recurring topics in contemporary art. In this sense, artists act as witnesses of their time, as passeurs, critics, or analysts, expressing themselves through their work and questioning the cultural construction of history. The exhibition 'CGEM: Notes on Emancipation', is conceived as a global project generated by the guest artists, and includes a series of activities that will activate the space and allow public participation.

About the artists
Carolina Caycedo (London, UK,1978)
Caycedo lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico and her work addresses the effects of worldwide capitalism, with a practice rooted in the processes of communication, movement and exchange. Her varied projects, which range from street actions and mobile markets to public demonstrations, germinate into dialogues with communities outside the art world, and her works always refer to informal culture and economy. For Caycedo, the place of artistic experience extends beyond the studio or exhibition space, filtering into the broader context in which the artist lives and moves. The result is work that consists in creating opportunities for cooperation and dialogue among a wide range of individuals and communities, rather than objects of passive aesthetic contemplation. Caycedo constantly analyzes the borders between producers and consumers, professionals and amateurs, benefits and disadvantages, and art and society.

Adriana Lara (Mexico, 1978)
Lara lives and works in Mexico City and creates individual and group projects that are less based on the production of objects than on a conceptual approach to artistic production and the exhibition space. Lara focuses on artistic models, presenting problems or situations for the spectator’s reflection. Adriana Lara is co-founder of Perros Negros, an art production office that proposes new platforms for discourse and production, for the purpose of expanding creative projects and giving them visibility. Among other projects of Perros Negros, she is publisher of Pazmaker, a fanzine featuring articles by different authors. She has had solo shows at Gaga Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2008); Galería Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2007); and Air de Paris, Paris, France (2007). Her work has been included in group shows such as San Juan Trienal Poligráfica, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Germany (2009); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); and La Mamain et la Putain, Air de Paris, Paris, France (2006).

Judi Werthein(Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973)
Werthein lives and works in New York. Through interdisciplinary work, she focuses her artistic investigation on the process of formation/construction of the individual and collective subject, with a particular interest in the interpretation of identities as flexible and untranslatable rather than static or fixed. Her work enables her to transmit the experience of outsiders through the language of mainstream culture, presenting the stereotypes of the Western capitalist conception from a different perspective. She has had solo shows at Art in General, New York, NY (2007); the Chianti Foundation, Marfa, Texas (2003); and the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (2002). Her work has been included in group shows such as Manifesta 7, Bolzano, Italy (2008); Beginning with a Bang: From Confrontation to Intimacy, Americas Society, New York, NY (2007); The irresistible Force, Tate Modern, London (2007); and In-Site San Diego, CA/Tijuana, Mexico (2005).

Carla Fernández (Saltillo, Coah, Mexico, 1973)
Fernández lives and works in Mexico City. She is a fashion designer, founder of “Taller Flora”, and winner of the International Young Fashion Entrepreneur 2008 award granted by the British Council during London Fashion Week. She is design consultant for the directorate of popular and native cultures of Conaculta in different communities of Mexico. Flora workshop operates as a travelling laboratory that is partly carried out in native communities and partly in Mexico City. The project seeks to create a sustainable option allowing the incorporation of craft processes in an effort to involve them in a contemporary scene without falling into folklorism. This pedagogy also contributes to establish links with different cooperatives and strengthen networks that function with principles of fair trade and materials that have positive ecological impacts.

http://www.musac.es