They’re ugly, plastic, offensive and… used. But secondhand blow-up dolls (yes, you read that right) are also waterproof and durable. So, designer Sander Reijgers decided they’d be the perfect material to upcycle into attention-getting windbreakers and track suits.
From Ecouterre:
“These dolls are so ugly and vulgar that turning them into something beautiful has become a challenge for me,” he says of the process. His inspiration came from reading The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras, in which the main character is incapable of feelings for people. Reijgers says his goal was to allow the dolls to perform normal day-to-day tasks—and free them from their original purpose—by turning them into clothing.
The media constantly bombards us with images of objectified women to push products, Reijgers observes.”I comment on this situation through my art, but with humour and without being too moralistic about it,” he says. But his rehabilitated wares are also a test of skill. “It’s a challenge for me to turn something empty and ugly like a sex doll into an aesthetic object that can elicit a positive response,” he adds.
Now, we already know where used blow-up dolls have been – and what’s been in them. Presumably, these things have been disinfected, but they still contain haunting memories of the things that doughy, bespectacled hairy-backed men have done to them.
Reijgers is making an interesting statement by putting these unsightly (depending on your perspective) objects and putting them front-and-center. But in this case, perhaps the noble urge to recycle has gone a little too far, indeed.
Link [Ecouterre]
