Embroidered Hip-Hop Lyric Lingerie Spins Hard Truths

All images courtesy Bethanie Brady Artist Management / (C) Billy Farrell / BFA.com

An installation comprised of vintage lingerie, hand-embroidered with lyrics from celebrated rappers, tackles the position of subordination women have long held in hip-hop culture. In an ingenious fashion, artist Zoe Buckman‘s exhibition, Every Curve, juxtaposes the genre’s often crude attitudes towards women with utterly feminine articles of dress, resulting in thought-provoking objects.

In LA’s Papillion Art’s main salon, soft daylight enters and casts a warm glow on the hanging undergarments. Silk slips, cone bras, girdles, garter belts and a host of other unmentionables are delicately suspended from the ceiling in this immersive installation, further complemented by sheer colored stockings modeled on various mannequin legs throughout the space.  Buckman sourced the lingerie from vintage boutiques, eBay, and Etsy, intentionally selecting items from the early 1900s to the 60s—to illustrate the evolution of women’s bodies throughout the decades.

Buckman, a native East Londoner investigates feminist terrain and women’s issues through photography, sculpture, embroidery and installation. Every Curve marks her second solo exhibit, but her first show with Papillion. In her 2015 debut show, Present Life, Buckman displayed her own plastinated placenta, exploring themes of mortality, beauty, and femininity in the process.

“The garments have had their own lives before I’ve worked on them, and by embroidering the lyrics onto them in a long and often painstaking practice. I’m also drawing on a history of female and feminist expression,” Buckman tells The Creators Project. The personal significance of this three-year project is monumental, Buckman explains: “I’m an incredibly nostalgic person, so this mode or expression is also a nod to who I was in the 90s / early ‘00s. The fact that I used to wear vintage slips over jeans and would sew words into my pencil cases at school.”

During the 90s, the artist’s formative years were shaped by listening to Biggie Smalls and Tupac, yet her unresolved feelings connected to the sexist overtones lingered on. Ultimately, motherhood became the motivating trigger for her to address the complicated messages. Instead of humming classic lullabies to her newborn daughter, Buckman would find herself reciting verses from Biggie’s 1994 album Ready to Die. Buckman tells The Creators Project, “When you’re cooing into your baby’s ear lyrics like ‘Bitches I like them brainless, guns I like them stainless steel,’ it’s hard not to find issue with the messaging and want to use your artwork to explore this dialogue.”

Every Curve doesn’t shy away from hip-hop’s sexually explicit themes. Biggie’s lascivious line from “The What”—“Welcome to my center, honeys feel it deep in their placenta”—is visually realized on a hand-embroidered panty. Yet, there is a poetically conflicting relationship between the undergarments and the hard-edged words sewn into them. The text is softened by the dainty embroidery, as if the words somehow seem less painful set against pretty garments. These contradictions run parallel in the music as well, where in the case of Tupac, his emotionality towards women routinely wavered. He glorifies the pleasures of adultery and promiscuity in “I Get Around,” yet empathizes with the plight of black women in “Keep Ya Head Up.” Buckman masterfully excels in bringing these concepts to light while simultaneously probing the viewer to seek deeper and more honest responses.

The exhibition also continues Buckman’s interests in chastity belts. A neon sculpture in the form of a chastity belt hangs, an antiquated symbol long associated with the torment of women. An installation of several hanging chastity belts fashioned from smooth metal and powder, coated into an array of luscious pastel tones, draws inspiration from 50s diners and kitchen interiors. But on closer inspection, what seems to be eye candy becomes something slightly ominous: the belts have jagged vaginal openings, and no longer seem playful, but rather dangerous.

Says Buckman, “They hang from the ceiling on fine thread and look almost like a baby’s mobile. They even look kind of charming at first, and I like that play between what we find appealing and what we find problematic.”

Every Curve will be on view through April 30 at Papillon Art in Los Angeles. Buckman is also participating in the group exhibit March Madness, curated by Hank Willis Thomas, currently on view through May 1, 2016, at Fort Gansevoort in New York.

Related:

Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted and Black” Inspires an Exhibition in South Africa

Ok, Now We Really Know Who Has The Largest Vocabulary In Hip-Hop

Boombox Sculptures Color the History of Hip-Hop

Share and Enjoy

Menomonie native’s lingerie company helps homeless – Leader

Menomonie native Willa Townsend started her lingerie company after learning about the great need for underwear for the homeless.

Townsend, whose mother, Jennifer Townsend, is part of the family who owned Lammer’s Fresh Foods in Menomonie for about 150 years, said she was having lunch with one of her professors at Duke University when he told her he had received an email from a local homeless shelter about a dire need for underwear and socks.

“I had no idea that there was such a need,” Townsend said. “I found out underwear and socks are the most needed and least donated items in homeless shelters.”

According to a 2015 Congressional Report on Homelessness, 600,000 men, women and children are homeless.

From that she came up with the idea to design men’s and women’s underwear and bralettes — bras without underwires or padding — for women. For each item purchased from her company, Drift Light, a week’s worth of underwear is donated to a homeless shelter.

Townsend, who graduated from Duke with a degree in economics and neuroscience, moved in June 2015 to Santa Monica, Calif., to start the company.

Crowdfunding

Drift Light is undergoing crowdfunding to help with the company startup. The goal is $20,000.

Preorders are being taken at the site shopdriftlight.com that will help with the startup of the company, Townsend said.

Unique styles

Drift Light has three styles of bralettes, three styles of women’s underwear and two styles of men’s underwear — boxers and boxer briefs.

Townsend researched what students wanted in undergarments.

“The things they wanted were that they were comfortable, stylish and affordable,” Townsend said. 

Underwear costs about $25 and bralettes about $50 to $55.

She designed all the undergarments herself. The basic underwear that is given to the homeless comes from other companies, she noted.

Townsend won the Duke startup company competition with her idea for Drift Light and received seed money to help start the company.

“It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to be a business owner,” she said. “It is exciting to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to start a company that can make a positive impact.

“You need to buy underwear anyway,” Townsend, 22, said. “Why not get a great pair of underwear and make a positive impact.”

Sarah Thwaites of Dallas, Texas said she has many drift light undergarments.

“I love the quality of the intimates,” she stated in an email. “They’re made just as well if not better than the popular lingerie companies. I would encourage everyone I know to support drift light because it’s so much more than cute underwear. With drift light not only do you get beautiful intimate pieces, but you get to help others get (undergarments) as well.”

Drift Light manufactures the undergarments in Los Angeles, Townsend noted.

“That is another thing that makes our brand so special,” she said.

Contact: 715-556-9018, pamela.powers@ecpc.com, @MenomonieBureau on Twitter

Share and Enjoy