In 2018 I created a series of paintings that were based on the simple act of getting dressed; an act that is seemingly unimportant but holds a lot of weight and meaning in our lives, in history and in society.
When I was working on the paintings of this series, I wrote this paragraph in my notebook:
‘There is this little moment before going out into the world that gives me a vague feeling of sadness, right when I am getting dressed. In the midst of this everyday act, where I prepare myself to be accepted, I pause’.
I think this little note pretty much sums up the moment when this series came to life.
Repetition is a double edge sword, it can exult the importance of something or it can devaluate it. Like getting dressed for example, we do it daily throughout our whole lives. It was done for us by our caregivers when we where infants, we do it ourselves now, and maybe later by caregivers again when we become unable to once more. I would dare to say that this repetition is so constant that most of us just get dressed in the morning without much thought about it. However, clothing plays a relevant role in human history. It can suppose a social status, a quest of identity, an aesthetic or protective function, etc. Clothing can affect the judgments on how others see you and can influence people’s insertion in society.
I find these paintings to be reflective, quiet and with different layers of meaning, which allows for a slow “reading” of the work. Mainly because there isn’t a straight narrative, but perhaps parallel discourses at the same time, just like the repetition of the same woman in one indoor space.
On one hand “This show we are in” evokes the idea of the construct of Self through the view of others. And, on the other hand, it exposes an interruption of a subtle intimacy through the relation between the viewer and the depiction of women in the middle of the ritual of getting dressed. This interruption of intimacy relates, at the same time, with the common and yearned process by the artist of exhibiting his/her works of art, which usually have been created in seclusion.
I am a Chilean in the United States, and I made this series when I was residing here. The previous paintings I was doing in Chile were occupied with landscapes, but here, since I paint things the way I experience them, I only depicted women in interior spaces, alluding to the lack of belonging to anything else but a room.
–Daniela Kovačić
