Provenance: ARNDT Private Collection, USA

ABOUT THE WORK

The dress as subject matter is intertwined with the brilliant artist Marina Cruz. It is, of course, the stories — personal, familial, and social — behind these well-worn dresses that fascinate. These frocks have become metaphors for both experience and memory; both stored and retrieved; both hidden and then found. In the work at hand, it is not clear if this is a childs’ cotton clothing, sadly outgrown; or if this belonged to her mother. The ruffled hem and puffed sleeves show careful, almost loving, folds. Faded and thinned out in places, the dress appears to have been freshly retrieved from a cabinet and unfolded onto a bedspread, showing the deep creases that only time and forgetfulness can create. For whatever reason it had been unearthed, the viewer can only muse. The dress is its own evocative narration, representing a relic of an old life, bringing to the fore how objects are powerful conduits of one’s histories and therefore of one’s very self.