east window presents: Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi’s “Crip Couture”
January 5 – 29, 2021, FREE, 10am – 10pm every day
Our ideas of body image are constantly bombarded by the constructs of racism, sexism, ageism, consumerism and ableism. Disabled women are often seen as asexual. Traditionally they are taught to conform to non-disabled beauty standards by passing or hiding their impairments, thereby denying their self-value.
Sandie Yi creates a counter-narrative to myths and stereotypes about disability, which she calls “Crip Couture”, a form of wearable art that centers on the histories and narratives generated within and performed by the disabled body through everyday social, cultural and political interaction. Her work aims to facilitate dialogue between the wearers and the viewers of these objects.
Yi has merged the idea of prosthetics — which aim to create more-or-less standardized body form and function — and jewelry to make a range of garments, accessories and footwear. Rather than rejecting the notion of physical alteration, Yi has created intimate and empathetic bodily adornments, not as correctional physical aids, but as tools for engaging with newly embodied, deeply personal standards of physical comfort and self-defined ideals of beauty.
As a collection of wearable works, Yi’s “Crip Couture” has explored the impact of ethical and medical decisions made about the body; the boundary between ethics and aesthetics; the idea of the body in flux; and body ownership (reclaiming the body).
Yi’s wearable objects and their wearers call for a recognition of collective Crip experiences and suggest the possibility for a new genre of wearable art; Disability Fashion. Yi consistently reinvents the meanings of disabled bodies.