During my final year at Barnard College, I created a body of work consisting of wearable sculptures, culminating in my senior thesis. I used architectural, woodworking, and metalworking techniques to create the sculptures. Below is a gallery of selected images and my final thesis statement.

Wearability as Sculpture, Sculpture as Experience

Jamie Sutton, April 2020

Wearability is limitless. Each and every wearing is different. The masks are not always in the present, but in the process of beginning over; they are born over and over again, creating unique experiences that recall aging, evolution, participation, activity, and ritual. Your gesture combined with the response of the mask creates a new relationship, which is only made possible by the mediation the mask erects between you and the world.

The masks are active works. Your act of wearing the mask produces the work, the same way the act of wearing technology produces a feeling and creates a sense of connectedness and efficiency. While the masks respond to the technology that both isolates and connects us, they are also an experiment concerned with the consequences of surveillance in the future. My generation can be represented by this utopian anxiety about a future that brings the human and technology closer than ever before. Technology will be, more than ever before, an extension of the body. The masks mimic technology in that they alter the way people interact and connect, obscuring vision, creating a filter that blurs the line between reality and illusion.

Recognizing another person’s face is something we have taken for granted. The upward trend of mask-wearing for biological reasons has obscured our vision, as covering all or part of the face has transformed our perception of the self and the body. Masks keep us safe, but they also project a message of weaponization out to the world, sending out the energy of “don’t come near me.” In this way, both the mask-wearer and the person interacting with the masked person are made to perform a gesture.

The works are not limited to their occupation of objective space to be fully understood. Photos and videos will suffice. So will the sculptures themselves, as long as they are handled by real people. The action decodes the meaning instantly. The work can then be born over and over again.