GIGANTIC TASK
Chinese fashion designer’s installation art aims to raise awareness about wildlife, Cheng Yuezhu reports.
Alife-sized elephant, wrapped in denim with wrinkles and wounds, reveals bones of steel and a red fetus dangling from her belly. A calf walks beside her, blood washing down its light blue skin.
This is the installation art piece, entitled Maasai Mara, which was displayed at the Beijing Exhibition Center recently.
The artwork has been created by Liang Mingyu, who visited the wildlife reserve in Kenya in 2015.
Liang, born in 1956, became a fashion designer in 1989, and worked as the chief designer for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
She is currently a professor at China’s Southwest University and a council member of the China Fashion Association.
To fashion critic Yuan Ze, Liang is “a pioneer in Chinese fashion design”; to artist and critic Nie Changshuo, Liang’s works “bring China’s ancient and rich cultural traditions to the contemporary fashion platform”; and the late professor of the University of Oxford Michael Sullivan had called Liang the “first person in China to establish fashion design as a serious art form”.
While her previous works focus on a modernistic expression of traditional Chinese culture, in particular the ethnic Bayu culture from Liang’s hometown Chongqing, her latest work is infused with a concern for the environment.
Liang’s inspiration for the installation came after she accepted an invitation from her friend Zhuo Qiang (known as Xingba), to visit Africa in 2015, where he has been working on animal protection and research. Setting foot on the vast expanse of the Maasai Mara, Liang felt she understood the predicament of wild animals, and decided to create an installation of elephants to raise public awareness.
“Elephants are quite docile. Normally they will not attack humans. However, they’ve long been used in performances. I’ve seen in some tourist attractions, trainers beating their elephants with metal bars, and the elephants covered in injuries,” Liang says.
In the meantime, Liang happened to have been working on an “ecological denim” collection, as she wanted to draw attention to pollution caused by the fabric’s manufacturing process.
“It is reported that the water used to produce denim jeans is poisonous, posing serious danger to the environment and people’s health. The damage is appalling in the coastal regions of China where jeans are mass-produced,” Liang says.
Intending to call for the public to recycle denim garments and put an end to their production, Liang designed the collection with entirely second-hand denims donated by her friends, students and factories from their excess stock. “Just like organ implants, useless denim products can be used for something meaningful.”
For Liang, denim was the perfect material for her elephant installation.
“Denim is an international textile representing consumerism,” she says, adding that it is also a rare fabric that is thick enough to be shaped.
Having decided on the subject and the material, Liang again called for denim donations and the garments this time along with the previous collection added to some 200 pieces.
Liang then categorized the garments based on color, thickness and texture, and she made a preliminary sketch on glass, and then got a steel frame made. She spent six months hand-stitching the denim onto the frame. Determined to maximize the effects with refined sewing techniques, Liang did most of the work by herself.
But the denim was not simply wrapped around the frames.
“I made use of the original features of jeans — the pockets, cuffs and different colors — and presented them with traditional and haute couture methods to simulate the wounds,” Liang says.
Liang did not want to overwhelm the viewers with discomfort and contrition, so she added a sense of hope to her work.
“The red infant embodies the continuation of life, but it is only connected with its mother with a thin line. If human beings do not change, then life will diminish.”
Though having to work in the sweltering summer of Chongqing and often suffering from needlestick injuries caused by sewing needles, she describes the experience as one evoking “a strong sense of tranquility and awe for nature and animals”.
“There seems to be an interaction between the elephants and us over the six months,” Liang says. “Even my dogs developed an attachment with them. They were so used to the giant elephants in the studio that when the elephants were taken apart for transportation, they seemed sad and lay on the floor whining.”
The installation was first shown to the public at the fourth International Fashion and Lifestyle Expo held at the Beijing Exhibition Hall from Oct 26 to 29, when Liang also received a lifetime achievement award in fashion art.
As its title Maasai Mara
I really hope my works can ensure more care for the Earth and its inhabitants.”
Liang Mingyu, fashion designer
embodies her solicitude for wild animals, Liang says she hopes to develop the installation into a series.
“I plan to make more animals and exhibit them to the whole world. I really hope my works can ensure for more care for the Earth and its inhabitants.”