Everyone has a way of expressing themselves, whether it be through their words, works or actions. One of the essential ways we see ourselves and how we see each other is through the selection of clothes and accessories that we choose every day. “I Am More Than Who You See,” an exhibit in the Aperture Gallery at the Erb Memorial Union, hopes to explore the themes of external perception through garments. The Daily Emerald covered this exhibit during its run in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in the article “Expression through clothing.” The exhibit is a collaboration between first-year graduate student Malik Lovette and fourth-year undergrad student Kayla Lockwood.
In early 2020, Lovette proposed the eventual project to Lisa Abia-Smith, who connected Lovette to Lockwood to work on it together. They wanted to help bolster the inclusion and equity within museums. Through the conversation of identity and clothing, they grew their project.
“However, there are implications of others, like stereotyping or putting others in a box because of their aesthetics as well. So then we were kind of discussing the nuances of how does one view you because you’re wearing Supreme versus like, how does wearing Supreme make you feel?” Lockwood said. This helped focus the exhibition and what themes they wanted to explore when creating it.
“One way that I guess we thought of it was pulling the internal and external perspective of someone’s aesthetic and that’s kind of something I’ve always tried to implement within my personal work and Kayla’s ethos to her work is similar. So that’s what kind of allowed us to come to mesh very organically to develop a pretty cool project,” Lovette said. Subjects from the student body met with them over Zoom when the pandemic made it difficult to meet in person. Through these conversations and worksheets, they let the 14 subjects show how they express themselves with one out of their unique clothes collections.
“That was like a huge driving factor for me was that emphasis in the community voice, especially the student community voice, having a say and pretty much driving the narrative of this overall project as well,” Lockwood said.
The person explains why they may wear a brand, like Maxine Francisco who explains how she bought her Stüssy shirt while visiting her mom’s hometown in Osaka, Japan. They also explain why certain clothes make them feel more comfortable in their identity. Jasmine Jackson does this by explaining their “tomboy” uni-sex clothes choice.
The original run of this exhibition took place at the JSMA from June to November of last year. This was a chance to help people feel more welcome in a space that can seem inaccessible to many people. When a diverse set of students are let into the museum or art gallery who are expressing their true selves makes the space feel more open. With this they hope to inspire others to follow and express their voices.
“There’s this bridging the gap of bringing the community one into an atmosphere, or infrastructure or building that they’re not used to going to, but then on top of that, being able to see themselves in it. For me, I think that inspires everyone to then find their personal expression, which I think is like the ultimate thing that defines creativity,” Lovette said.
“I Am More Than Who You See” will be on view in the Aperture Gallery between March 25 through May 20 for any student to peruse and be inspired by.
