Hussein Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) andBurka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

I think what makes fashion fashion, is when you get someone such as celebrities/models who has a strong influence on others, put them in a piece of clothing made by recognized designers, and pop the image of them wearing those clothes out in the media. that would probably be considered as fashion.

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like TheLevel Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

I don't think the meaning of art changes. It is still Hussein Chalayan’s work. Just because it is paid for by a commercial company doesn’t make it less of an art piece. I don’t think art changes when selling products.

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform(1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

I think sometimes artist ideas can be to big of a project to handle on their own,sometimes they need someones help who has the right experience to assist them in their project, so the artist plan can be properly executed. however i think most of the work has to be done by the artist themselves because it is their work.